An emotional Annette Greaves yesterday said she would like President Anthony Carmona to investigate the police killing of her 23-year-old son Christopher. After Opposition Leader Dr Keith Rowley visited her Fifth Street, Beetham Gardens, home yesterday, Greaves told the media her son was shot in the back for no reason whatever. Like other Beetham residents, she insisted it was an act of police brutality.
She said her son was standing with a black soft drink in his hand when the police shot him and he tried to run to his home nearby after being shot. “And when he ran he fell in front of his brother’s place,” she said. In fact, she claimed the police were about to shoot her already wounded son again but were stopped by a relative. She said the police did not find any gun on her son, although the police say he fired at them when they challenged him.
Greaves said she wanted to know why the police would leave a bleeding man to die. “They leave him there, pick up all the shells and they left and called another batch of police from Pashley Street to investigate,” the distraught mother said. “This is what I want Gillian Lucky (Police Complaints Authority director) and President Carmona and the acting Commissioner of Police Stephen Williams to investigate.”
Williams, she said, must get rid of the rogue elements in the Police Service. She said she “won’t render evil for evil” but added that she knew how to pray. “Everybody who are saying bad things about Beetham, their time will come to know that what hasn’t met them won’t pass them,” Greaves said. “Beetham is a stigma, so they want to kill out all Beetham men, but it has a God.”
Earlier, Inez Lewis, 81, who was in a front-page picture on yesterday’s Newsday with her dress raised, demanded an apology from the paper over the photo, saying she was very upset over it. Other residents of Beetham threatened to mount a protest against the newspaper for publishing the picture. Lewis said she had her “medical papers” from St Ann’s Hospital and had spent seven months there after her daughter died.
Saying she loved Greaves like a son, Lewis said she was upset on Sunday after being prevented from seeing Greaves’ body when he was killed by the police. However, on Monday during the residents’ fiery protest, she said she became overwhelmed after police blocked her from getting to an area to join other residents.
She said before she realised it she got into a “state” and had partially undressed herself. She said she since asked God to forgive her for that deed, but all these emotions came back to her yesterday after she saw the photo. She said: “The slightest thing trips me and I am suffering with the heart and pressure.” Rowley and MPs Nileung Hypolite and Donna Cox walked the streets of Beetham Gardens yesterday.
Rowley extended condolences to the Greaves family. He said the investigation into the killing must take place, but said the people of Beetham must come together to assist in the bigger problem in their community. “We have to ensure that whatever we do in response to whatever happens, we do it within the law,” he added. Rowley told the Greaves family: “We understand your grief, but there are bigger issues and we are going to have to address those issues.”
He said if the crime problem in Beetham Gardens were to be solved, residents would have to co-operate fully. “We have special problems in here requiring special solutions,” he added. Rowley told residents they were neither forgotten nor abandoned, adding the People’s National Movement represents each of them in Parliament.