PCA probes Tobago police shooting

The Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty (PCA) has be­gun its probe in­to the po­lice-in­volved shoot­ing of a Par­latu­vi­er man dur­ing har­vest cel­e­bra­tions in To­ba­go on Mon­day.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that a PCA in­ves­ti­ga­tor is cur­rent­ly in Bloody Bay in­ter­view­ing rel­a­tives of 37-year-old Os­ae Mur­ray and oth­er po­ten­tial wit­ness­es.

Mur­ray’s rel­a­tives told Guardian Me­dia there had been con­flict be­tween Mur­ray and a 42-year-old po­lice of­fi­cer since the of­fi­cer be­gan dat­ing one of Mur­ray’s for­mer girl­friends.

A po­lice re­port said Mur­ray was wield­ing a bam­boo stick when he ap­proached the of­fi­cer in an ag­gres­sive man­ner while mak­ing cer­tain re­marks. The re­port said Mur­ray struck the of­fi­cer on his left arm with the bam­boo and was about to land an­oth­er blow when the of­fi­cer feared for his life and drew his li­censed firearm. He shot Mur­ray once in the ab­domen.

Mur­ray’s broth­er, Rayan Woods, told Guardian Me­dia he was in Cas­tara when he heard that Mur­ray had been shot. He said that when he ar­rived at the scene, he saw Mur­ray mo­tion­less on the ground and sur­round­ed by peo­ple. He took Mur­ray to the Rox­bor­ough Hos­pi­tal, and he was lat­er trans­ferred to Scar­bor­ough Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, where he re­mains ward­ed.

The bul­let left Mur­ray with se­ri­ous in­ter­nal in­juries, in­clud­ing dam­age to his in­testines and liv­er. He has al­so lost a kid­ney.

Po­lice are con­tin­u­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions.