The State has been ordered to pay over $400,000 in compensation to a fire officer, who was maliciously prosecuted by police officers after being seriously wounded in a shoot out between them and his friend.
Roosevelt Gaspard filed an assault and battery, false imprisonment, wrongful arrest and malicious prosecution case after the incident on April 16, 2015, which left paralysed from the waist down and wheelchair bound.
High Court Judge Ricky Rahim delivered a bittersweet judgment for Gaspard on Monday as he dismissed his claims for assault and battery and wrongful arrest but upheld his malicious prosecution and false imprisonment claims.
According to Gaspard, on the morning of the incident, he was contacted by his friend Kevin, who is now deceased.
Kevin picked him up at St Joseph and they went to a bar in Santa Cruz before driving to a house at First Street, Sun Valley, San Juan.
Gaspard claimed that he was smoking a cigarette in the garage while Kevin went inside.
He claimed that several police vehicles pulled up outside and without warning the officers opened fire on him.
He said that he tried to run away but was shot once in his back.
He claimed that while he was lying on the ground, the officers stood over him and began to kick him.
He claimed that one officer pushed the nozzle of his gun into his gunshot wound.
Gaspard alleged that he was handcuffed and left on the ground for almost an hour before being taken to the Eric Williams Medical Sciences Complex in Mt Hope.
He claimed that a police officer dropped him when removing him from the police vehicle.
He also alleged that he fell asleep while awaiting treatment in the emergency area and was awakened by two slaps to his face from a senior police officer.
Gaspard spent almost a month at the hospital before he was discharged as the bullet was lodged in his lower vertebrae.
He was then slapped with four robbery with aggravation charges.
The charges were eventually dismissed by a magistrate in February 2019 after the police officers repeatedly failed to attend court hearings to testify.
In response to the subsequent lawsuit, the officers denied any wrongdoing.
They claimed that they were investigating an armed robbery and that a phone that was stolen was tracked to the location where Gaspard was found. They also alleged that they saw a vehicle matching the description of the one stolen in the robbery in the garage.
They claimed that Gaspard was standing outside with another man, who opened fire on them with a machine gun and they shot back in self defence.
They also denied assaulting Gaspard after he collapsed due to the gunshot injury.
The man they claimed shot at them eventually surrendered and was charged for the robberies alongside Gaspard. While the robbery charges were dismissed, he still faces charges related to the alleged shoot out.
In deciding the case, Justice Rahim did not accept Gaspard's claims that he was standing outside alone.
"While it is a fact that allegations of the police having opened fire on groups have surfaced in Trinidad from time to time, the court finds it implausible that the police would open fire (which is of course an illegality in any form) on one unarmed person standing outside a house when clearly the information was that there were several men involved in the robbery," he said.
Justice Rahim noted that based on the evidence he could not conclusively determine whether Gaspard was shot by the officers or allegedly by his friend.
"He must prove that more likely than not he was shot by the police and this he failed to do and the court so finds," he said.
He noted that even if he was shot by the officers, they were acting in self defence.
"The police acted in lawful self defence and did not use more force than was reasonably necessary to repel the attack," he said.
"Unfortunately for Gaspard, he found himself in the wrong company at the wrong time," he added.
Justice Rahim also ruled that there was no medical evidence to buttress his other assault claims against the officers.
In upholding the malicious prosecution case, Justice Rahim noted that Gaspard was charged despite CCTV footage of the robbery showing that he was not involved.
He also noted that the officer, who laid the charges, did so because of comments made by his supervisor over Gaspard's alleged association with Bancroft.
"This of course may not necessarily by itself provide evidence of malice but when placed in the mix it makes the advent of actual malice more likely than not," he said.
Justice Rahim ordered $200,000 in general damages and $50,000 in exemplary damages plus interest at 2.5 and 1.5 per cent per annum, respectively, from 2019 to the date of the judgment.
The State was also ordered to reimburse Gaspard the $162,000 in legal fees incurred in defending the criminal charges. It was also ordered to pay his legal costs for the civil lawsuit.
Gaspard was represented by Osbourne Charles, SC, and Owen Hinds Jr. The Office of the Attorney General was represented by Maria Belmar-Williams.
