An­tigua & Bar­bu­da’s Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, Atlee Patrick Rod­ney, has hint­ed at the pos­si­bil­i­ty of for­eign in­ves­ti­ga­tors as­sist­ing in the in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the death of the in­de­pen­dent leg­is­la­tor, Asot Michael, whose body was found in a pool of blood by his maid at his Dry Hill Res­i­dence on the out­skirts of the cap­i­tal on Tues­day morn­ing.

Rod­ney told a news con­fer­ence that Michael, 54, who served as a min­is­ter in pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tions of the Gas­ton Browne ad­min­is­tra­tion, had at least one ma­jor stab wound to the chest, but that the in­ves­ti­ga­tions were in the ear­ly stages to de­ter­mine the cause of death.

“It is one of those sad oc­ca­sions we have to ad­dress as in­ves­ti­ga­tors…we had the call ear­ly this morn­ing that he was found un­re­spon­sive, we re­spond­ed quick­ly and as the doc­tor has just con­firmed he has passed away,” Rod­ney told re­porters near the scene of the mur­der. Watch video

“There are some in­juries on the body which now opens up a homi­cide in­ves­ti­ga­tion as the cir­cum­stances that led to the in­juries. We do not know what hap­pened, but we are go­ing to use all the re­sources that we have lo­cal­ly, re­gion­al­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly.

“I will be speak­ing with my re­gion­al part­ners; I will be speak­ing with my in­ter­na­tion­al part­ners and what­ev­er re­sources we need we will use every­thing to ad­dress such a se­ri­ous crime. It is a heinous crime when you see that type of in­jury and some­body ly­ing in that con­di­tion,” the top cop told re­porters.

Rod­ney ap­pealed to eye­wit­ness­es and mem­bers of the pub­lic to come for­ward and as­sist in the in­ves­ti­ga­tion, urg­ing them al­so to “re­spect the pri­va­cy of the fam­i­ly es­pe­cial­ly with the type of in­for­ma­tion they are go­ing to share.”

“At the same time we are ask­ing any­one who has in­for­ma­tion … to step for­ward,” he urged. “This is a na­tion­al event in the term that every­body has a part to play and we look for­ward to every cit­i­zen play­ing their part in solv­ing this mat­ter.”

Rod­ney said Michael was a leg­is­la­tor, for­mer gov­ern­ment min­is­ter and some­one “who has as­sist­ed so many per­sons in An­tigua and be­yond.”

He said he has spo­ken to the fam­i­ly and the in­ves­ti­ga­tors have spo­ken al­so to the “trau­ma­tised” maid who found the body.

He said it was too ear­ly to in­di­cate whether there had been a forced en­try in­to the house.

‘The in­ves­ti­ga­tors are on the scene …they are sup­port­ed by oth­er op­er­a­tional of­fi­cers and at this stage we will just gath­er as much in­for­ma­tion,” he said, not­ing that lat­er on Tues­day, the po­lice will be hav­ing a case con­fer­ence to de­ter­mine what ev­i­dence they would have col­lect­ed.

Michael, the Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for St Pe­ter, had con­test­ed the last gen­er­al elec­tion on Jan­u­ary 18, 2023 as an in­de­pen­dent can­di­date af­ter he fell out with the rul­ing the An­tigua and Bar­bu­da Labour Par­ty (ABLP).

He be­gan his po­lit­i­cal ca­reer in 1995 serv­ing as the Spe­cial Ad­min­is­tra­tive As­sis­tant to then-Prime Min­is­ter Lester Bird, and was even­tu­al­ly ap­point­ed Bird’s Chief of Staff in 1997. In 199 he was ap­point­ed a gov­ern­ment sen­a­tor as well as Min­is­ter of State in the of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, over­see­ing re­spon­si­bil­i­ties for Pub­lic Works, Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, In­sur­ance, En­er­gy and St. John’s De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion.

He con­tin­ued in that role un­til 2001 when he be­came a full min­is­ter re­spon­si­ble for these port­fo­lios un­til 2003. He was al­so ap­point­ed Ju­nior Min­is­ter of Fi­nance un­til 2003.

He was first elect­ed to the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives for the con­stituen­cy of Saint Pe­ter in 2004 and on 23 Oc­to­ber 2017, he was de­tained at Heathrow Air­port while in tran­sit to a con­fer­ence in France, be­ing ac­cused of hav­ing re­quest­ed bribes from a British in­vestor in 2016

While be­ing in­ter­viewed by U.K. au­thor­i­ties, Prime Min­is­ter Browne re­moved him as Min­is­ter of Tourism, Eco­nom­ic De­vel­op­ment, In­vest­ment and En­er­gy de­spite Michael deny­ing any wrong­do­ing.

In 2018, Michael was ac­cused by British in­vestor Pe­ter Vird­ee of Michael’s in­volve­ment in a bribery scheme. Michael de­nied so­lic­it­ing bribes and said the orig­i­nal de­ten­tion was for the pur­pose of an in­ter­view with po­lice. —ST. JOHN’S, An­tigua (CMC)