Police hunt for man seen beating young woman in video

Po­lice were yes­ter­day search­ing for a Diego Mar­tin man who was record­ed as­sault­ing a young woman and or­der­ing her to get dressed as her, “Sev­en days were done.”

In the 44-sec­ond video post­ed to so­cial me­dia, the young woman of African de­scent, who was clad in a pair of pink and black tights, and a bra alone, could be heard cry­ing and beg­ging the sus­pect to leave her as she did not want to go even as he slapped and punched her in the face and head.

The sus­pect, who is be­lieved to be a grad­u­ate of the Diego Mar­tin Po­lice Youth Club, was heard telling the girl, “Yuh doh have no choice.”

The dis­turb­ing in­ci­dent which was se­cret­ly record­ed by an al­leged friend of the sus­pect, was quick­ly cir­cu­lat­ed on­line and shared by hun­dreds via What­sApp.

He was heard com­ment­ing in the back­ground that the vic­tim was, “Look­ing for she own bac­cha­nal,” as the woman was re­peat­ed­ly slapped and pulled by the hair.

When con­tact­ed yes­ter­day morn­ing act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Ju­nior Ben­jamin said of­fi­cers re­ceived in­for­ma­tion about the sus­pect from the cy­ber­crime unit.

He said he spoke with the Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice from the In­ves­ti­ga­tions and In­tel­li­gence Unit, Suzette Mar­tin, who had passed the in­for­ma­tion along to the Spe­cial Vic­tims Unit that deals with gen­der-based vi­o­lence.

A se­nior po­lice of­fi­cer lat­er con­firmed that of­fi­cers were aware of the sus­pect’s iden­ti­ty and had been hunt­ing for him.

Mean­while, scores of so­cial me­dia users on Face­book weighed in, with many sus­pect­ing this was not the first time the sus­pect had abused the young woman, while oth­ers con­demned the vi­o­lent dis­play.

Saro­janie Joseph wrote, “Hm­mm these chil­dren doh hear nah. You can talk all you want. They love gang­ster man.”

Lois Cal­len­der coun­tered, “I don’t care if she left her moth­er’s good house to go look for man, or is gang­ster man she likes, what­ev­er you guys think it is ... THIS IS VERY DIS­TRESS­ING TO WATCH. Hope the au­thor­i­ties get in­volved with or with­out her con­sent!”

Dee­jay­boots George cau­tioned oth­ers not to feel sor­ry for the sus­pect as, “This is why when you see or hear them pick up corn don’t be sor­ry for them nah ... Not my daugh­ter or my sis­ter sol­dier and the man who record­ing, I hope you eh have sis­ters tuh tape this and eh try stop him. Or maybe you fraid you get hard slap too.”

Deryck Williams re­marked, “And if any­one in­ter­vene the same girl will say ‘leave meh man alone’, and then peo­ple won­der why every­one does refuse to help. Makes you won­der if they like the beat­ings and abuse.”