Family of slain roofer criticise slow post-mortem process

Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­[email protected]

Ten days af­ter trades­man At­i­ba Shal­low was gunned down in Mt D’Or, his griev­ing rel­a­tives are de­mand­ing ur­gent re­forms to what they de­scribe as slow and painful process­es faced by fam­i­lies of mur­der vic­tims, af­ter his au­top­sy was fi­nal­ly com­plet­ed yes­ter­day.

Shal­low, 45, was gunned down on May 1, af­ter go­ing to a near­by job­site for work as a roofer.

The rel­a­tives said the de­lays in Shal­low’s post-mortem were part­ly due to po­lice of­fi­cers who for­got to bring the nec­es­sary doc­u­ments on one oc­ca­sion, which led to the pro­ce­dure be­ing de­layed to a lat­er date.

The rel­a­tives vis­it­ed the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre, St James, yes­ter­day as they were told that Shal­low’s body would be brought to the cen­tre for his au­top­sy to even­tu­al­ly be com­plet­ed.

Both women, who asked not to be named, said they had iden­ti­fied Shal­low’s body since May 6 and were not pleased with the slow pace of the process, not­ing that such de­lays on­ly pro­longed the fam­i­ly’s grief as they were hop­ing to re­solve the process be­fore the end of the week.

“We think they should have at least two pathol­o­gists on du­ty, and to have bet­ter seat­ing and fa­cil­i­ties in place here (at the cen­tre).

“Peo­ple are al­ready griev­ing. We have been wait­ing ten days now. This sys­tem is in a mess.”

An­oth­er rel­a­tive said that she hoped that she would not have to ex­pe­ri­ence the mur­der of a loved one again, not on­ly be­cause of the grief as­so­ci­at­ed with the tragedy, but al­so be­cause of the time-con­sum­ing pro­ce­dures as­so­ci­at­ed with wait­ing for pa­per­work to pro­ceed with ar­rang­ing one’s fu­ner­al and in­sur­ance poli­cies.

Com­ment­ing on Shal­low’s mur­der, the rel­a­tives said they were un­able to con­firm whether or not he had been threat­ened by crim­i­nals be­fore, in­sist­ing that he fo­cused on­ly on his trade as a roofer and sup­port­ing his fam­i­ly.

One rel­a­tive not­ed that giv­en the fact that Shal­low was killed, seem­ing­ly with­out warn­ing, she felt it was ev­i­dent that crim­i­nals did not dis­crim­i­nate in who they tar­get­ed.

“He was al­ways a lon­er; he nev­er used to move with any­one. Even if some­one threat­ened, he may not have said any­thing.

“There’s no age for mur­der any­more. Those fel­las (crim­i­nals) just trig­ger hap­py, and if they don’t like and if they find you out of tim­ing, that’s how eas­i­ly it hap­pens. That’s how it hap­pens these days.

“They took a man who has his chil­dren. Even if you had a prob­lem with him, you all could have fight it out, you gone to get a gun and come back and deal with him?”

One rel­a­tive said Shal­low was the fa­ther of two chil­dren, ages four and six, who were tak­en out of the neigh­bour­hood by rel­a­tives for their safe­ty and al­so to help them in pro­cess­ing the trag­ic na­ture of the sit­u­a­tion.

Guardian Me­dia sought a re­sponse from the TTPS on whether the de­lays in Shal­low’s au­top­sy were due to of­fi­cers for­get­ting doc­u­ments.

A spokesper­son for the TTPS cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions unit ac­knowl­edged re­ceipt of the ques­tions and con­firmed that Shal­low’s post-mortem was com­plet­ed yes­ter­day, but was un­able to re­spond to any oth­er ques­tions on the de­lays.

Of­fi­cers of the Re­gion II Homi­cide Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tions are con­tin­u­ing en­quiries.