Stephon Nicholas

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

A To­ba­go man is fight­ing for his life at the Scar­bor­ough Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal fol­low­ing a po­lice-in­volved shoot­ing in Bloody Bay on Mon­day evening.

Rel­a­tives say 37-year-old Os­ae Mur­ray is in sta­ble but se­ri­ous con­di­tion af­ter los­ing a kid­ney and suf­fer­ing dam­age to his in­testines and liv­er.

A 42-year-old po­lice of­fi­cer has been ques­tioned by in­ves­ti­ga­tors, but po­lice have not con­firmed whether he has been de­tained.

Mur­ray’s fam­i­ly is now call­ing for jus­tice, claim­ing a per­son­al con­flict pre­ced­ed Mon­day’s al­ter­ca­tion dur­ing har­vest cel­e­bra­tions along North­side Road.

They say there has been bad blood for years since the of­fi­cer be­gan dat­ing a woman who has a child with Mur­ray.

Ac­cord­ing to a po­lice re­port, the of­fi­cer was ap­proached by Mur­ray, who made cer­tain re­marks while armed with a piece of bam­boo.

Po­lice said Mur­ray swung the bam­boo and struck the of­fi­cer on his left hand. The re­port stat­ed that the of­fi­cer feared for his life and shot Mur­ray as he was about to strike again.

Rayan Woods, one of Mur­ray’s six sib­lings, said he was in Cas­tara check­ing on his boat when he re­ceived a call in­form­ing him that his broth­er had been shot.

Woods said that when he ar­rived at the scene, a crowd had al­ready gath­ered around Mur­ray, who was ly­ing mo­tion­less on the ground.

He said he trans­port­ed his broth­er, a URP work­er, to the Rox­bor­ough Hos­pi­tal in the back of a van. Mur­ray was lat­er trans­ferred to Scar­bor­ough Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, where he re­mains ward­ed un­der po­lice guard.

An emo­tion­al Ricky Guy, Mur­ray’s el­dest broth­er, fought back tears as he spoke with Guardian Me­dia out­side the hos­pi­tal yes­ter­day.

He said he had re­peat­ed­ly warned his sib­ling to avoid any con­fronta­tion with the po­lice of­fi­cer.

“This is not a one-time, two-time, three-time thing. This go­ing on years now from since he (the cop) put he self with she.

“All I does tell my broth­er, when yuh see him, go on the right side and leave him on the left side, let he go he mer­ry way.”

Guy said the po­lice of­fi­cer is claim­ing Mur­ray was the ag­gres­sor in the con­fronta­tion.

The of­fi­cer was re­port­ed­ly tak­en to the Rox­bor­ough Hos­pi­tal for treat­ment, but Guy said he re­mains scep­ti­cal about the ex­tent of his in­juries.

“Me ain’t leav­ing this so. I swear to God. What go­ing on there right now with my broth­er—every­thing punc­ture.

“He just swing­ing on a fine string right now and no­body knows what could be the out­come of my broth­er.”

“This is no one-time thing with this man. I want some­thing to come out of this right now.”

He said the fam­i­ly has re­tained an at­tor­ney to en­sure jus­tice is served.

Mean­while, Woods said he has lost faith in the po­lice con­duct­ing a fair in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

“They say the of­fi­cer get lock up, but he nev­er get lock up. He went in he ve­hi­cle.”

Head of the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty, David West, told Guardian Me­dia he is aware of the in­ci­dent and that an in­ves­ti­ga­tor is on the is­land gath­er­ing facts.

Area rep­re­sen­ta­tive and Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine did not re­spond to re­quests for com­ment up to pub­li­ca­tion time.