Derek Achong

Mu­si­cian and so­cial jus­tice ac­tivist Lou Lyons has de­mand­ed a pub­lic apol­o­gy from the South Caribbean Con­fer­ence of Sev­enth-Day Ad­ven­tist af­ter an im­age of him was shared in con­nec­tion with the mur­der of spe­cial pros­e­cu­tor Ran­dall Hec­tor.

In a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter sent yes­ter­day, Ly­on's lawyer Joel Rop­er claimed that his client suf­fered sig­nif­i­cant dis­tress af­ter an im­age of him at­tend­ing a ser­vice at a church at Stan­more Av­enue in Port-of-Spain was shared on so­cial me­dia af­ter Hec­tor's mur­der.

The im­age of Lyons had an ac­com­pa­ny­ing cap­tion al­leg­ing that he was not known to the con­gre­ga­tion, was seen tex­ting and speak­ing on his cell­phone, and seen walk­ing in the di­rec­tion Hec­tor was at when he was shot and killed.

Rop­er not­ed that Lyons is in fact a long­stand­ing mem­ber of the church.

"This de­vel­op­ment un­doubt­ed­ly cast our client in a neg­a­tive light and nu­mer­ous mem­bers of the pub­lic as evinced by their com­ments on the var­i­ous so­cial me­dia posts that shared the ini­tial mes­sage start­ed to as­sume the worst of our client and to as­so­ciate him with be­ing one of, if not the pri­ma­ry sus­pect in the trag­ic death of Mr Ran­dall Hec­tor," Rop­er said.

He claimed that the posts tar­nished Lyons' rep­u­ta­tion and that of his band Free­town Col­lec­tive as they were in the process of clos­ing "very im­por­tant" cor­po­rate spon­sor­ship deals.

"Con­se­quent­ly, those deals are now in jeop­ardy as there still re­mains a neg­a­tive cloud and/or shad­ow over the im­age and like­ness of our client even though he has since put out a state­ment that sought to rec­ti­fy the ini­tial mis­in­for­ma­tion that was spread­ing quick­ly through­out the pub­lic via so­cial me­dia," Rop­er said.

Rop­er point­ed out that af­ter the reck­less dis­sem­i­na­tion, Pas­tor Chad Bray, the pas­tor at the church, reached out to Lyons to apol­o­gise for the ac­cu­sa­tions made.

He stat­ed that the im­age would have had to em­anate from the church.

"It is al­so unar­guable that the mis­use of pri­vate pho­tos that were in the pos­ses­sion of the Stan­more Av­enue Sev­enth Day Ad­ven­tist Church and by ex­ten­sion the South Caribbean Con­fer­ence of Sev­enth Day Ad­ven­tist has ad­verse­ly af­fect­ed our client, in­clud­ing his per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al rep­u­ta­tion," Rop­er said.

Rop­er de­mand­ed that the church im­me­di­ate­ly is­sue and wide­ly dis­sem­i­nate a press re­lease with a pub­lic apol­o­gy. He al­so re­quest­ed that the church con­firm or de­ny whether it or its of­fi­cials edit­ed the footage and re­leased it in­to the pub­lic do­main.

He gave the church 28 days in which to re­spond and ac­cede to his re­quests be­fore he files a defama­tion law­suit against it.