Tobago police officer charged after Bloody Bay shooting

Stephon Nicholas

A To­ba­go po­lice of­fi­cer has been charged with wound­ing with in­tent af­ter al­leged­ly shoot­ing a man dur­ing har­vest cel­e­bra­tions in Bloody Bay on June 8.

Ac­cord­ing to po­lice re­ports, of­fi­cer Ker­nel Dates was off du­ty when he be­came in­volved in an al­ter­ca­tion with Os­ae Mur­ray of Par­latu­vi­er dur­ing the cel­e­bra­tions.

Po­lice said Dates claimed Mur­ray at­tacked him with a piece of bam­boo. Dates al­leged­ly drew his li­censed firearm and shot Mur­ray once in the ab­domen.

Mur­ray was tak­en to the Rox­bor­ough Hos­pi­tal be­fore be­ing trans­ferred to the Scar­bor­ough Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal. He re­mained ward­ed for sev­er­al days af­ter suf­fer­ing se­vere dam­age to one of his kid­neys and was lat­er dis­charged.

Fol­low­ing the in­ci­dent, Mur­ray's broth­ers claimed the con­fronta­tion stemmed from a per­son­al dis­pute, al­leg­ing Dates was in a re­la­tion­ship with their sib­ling's for­mer com­pan­ion.

The Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty pre­vi­ous­ly told Guardian Me­dia it was con­duct­ing its own in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the shoot­ing.