Judge throws out assault case involving prison officer, cops

Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

A prison of­fi­cer and a po­lice of­fi­cer have lost their sep­a­rate but in­ter­twined cas­es over an in­ci­dent in which both were wound­ed when the po­lice of­fi­cer and his col­leagues at­tempt­ed to en­ter an apart­ment the prison of­fi­cer was stay­ing at.

De­liv­er­ing a judg­ment late last month, High Court Judge Devin­dra Ram­per­sad dis­missed a case brought by prison of­fi­cer Reuel Ac­co against PC Vishal Singh, three of his col­leagues and the State for neg­li­gence; and an­oth­er brought by Singh against Ac­co for as­sault.

The out­come of both cas­es was based on Jus­tice Ram­per­sad’s in­abil­i­ty to de­ter­mine which of the of­fi­cers was at fault from the ev­i­dence pre­sent­ed be­fore him.

Jus­tice Ram­per­sad said, “The un­for­tu­nate re­sult is that both men sus­tained se­ri­ous gun­shot in­juries in an in­ci­dent the pre­cise se­quence of which the ev­i­dence does not per­mit this court to re­li­ably re­con­struct.”

“The court’s in­abil­i­ty to de­ter­mine that se­quence can­not, how­ev­er, re­lieve ei­ther claimant of the bur­den of prov­ing the cause of ac­tion ad­vanced in his re­spec­tive claim,” he added.

The cas­es stemmed from an in­ci­dent at Damarie Hill, San­gre Grande, on Au­gust 10, 2015.

Singh and his col­leagues, as­signed to the East­ern Di­vi­sion Task Force (EDTF), were re­spond­ing to a re­port of men armed with firearms be­ing at an apart­ment build­ing.

Singh and his col­leagues claimed they were greet­ed by gun­shots when they knocked on the door of an apart­ment. They claimed that Ac­co opened the door and con­tin­ued fir­ing at them and they re­turned fire in self-de­fence. Ac­co and Singh both sus­tained gun­shot wounds.

Ac­co claimed that Singh and his col­leagues nev­er iden­ti­fied them­selves and he be­lieved they (the of­fi­cers) were con­nect­ed to a group of pris­on­ers, who had pre­vi­ous­ly threat­ened him while he was on du­ty at the Gold­en Grove Prison in Arou­ca.

Ac­co claimed the of­fi­cers fired first and he shot back us­ing a pis­tol is­sued to him by the T&T Prison Ser­vice af­ter re­port­ing the threats.

He claimed he sur­ren­dered af­ter he re­alised the men were po­lice of­fi­cers.

He al­leged that he was hand­cuffed al­though he was wound­ed and claimed Singh re­peat­ed­ly kicked him be­fore he was tak­en for med­ical treat­ment.

In at­tempt­ing to de­ter­mine the cas­es, Jus­tice Ram­per­sad not­ed that he had dif­fi­cul­ties with the ev­i­dence of all the wit­ness­es and that there was in­suf­fi­cient foren­sic ev­i­dence to help de­ter­mine whose ac­count was more cred­i­ble.

“The court makes no gen­er­al find­ing that any wit­ness was dis­hon­est, and none is re­quired. Each side has ad­vanced an ac­count which the ob­jec­tive ev­i­dence con­tra­dicts in a ma­te­r­i­al re­spect,” Jus­tice Ram­per­sad said.

“The court is there­fore left with­out a re­li­able ac­count from ei­ther side, and with­out in­de­pen­dent ma­te­r­i­al ca­pa­ble of sup­ply­ing the de­fi­cien­cy,” he added.

Based on the out­come of the case, the par­ties were or­dered to bear their own le­gal costs.

Ac­co was rep­re­sent­ed by Kei­th Scot­land, SC, Asha Watkins-Montserin and Sara Car­raz. Singh was rep­re­sent­ed by Ganesh Sa­roop and An­ju Ramkissoon.

The Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al was rep­re­sent­ed by Coreen Find­ley, Ji­nai Chong Sing, Mur­vani Ojah Ma­haraj, and Sav­it­ri Ma­haraj.