POLICE commissioner Francis Forbes yesterday visited the Mount Ogle district of Lawrence Tavern in St Andrew yesterday and public expressed regret at the death of Romaine Edwards, the seven-year-old boy who apparently died from a police bullet on Monday.

Forbes also promised police assistance to the little boy’s family, an undertaking immediately embraced by the Police Federation, the union of rank and file cops.

“The Federation will be meeting with the parents tomorrow (today) to discuss assistance to them financially or otherwise,” the Federation’s chairman, Steve Brown, told the Observer.

He was among top police officials who accompanied Forbes on the visit, which was part of an effort by the police chief to mend strained relations between the community in the wake of little Romaine’s death and to get a first hand appreciation of the terrain where the bandit called ‘Taliban’ has been able over the past fortnight to easily and frequently evade the police.

“The terrain is very difficult,” Forbes quipped.

During yesterday’s visit the police commissioner missed Romaine’s parents, Byron Edwards, and his common-law wife Jennifer Young. They had gone to Kingston, to the Office of the Public Defender to seek assistance in filing action against the police. The dead boy’s older sister, Samantha, 8, and younger brother, Roshane, 2, were left in the care of a neighbour, Vera Evans.

“They want justice,” said a women in the high land area, outside the galvanised zinc–fenced yard where the little boy was killed.

Forbes had earlier told reporters: “We will see if anything can be done for the parents. We will get all the groups together — the Police Federation, police community relations etc. We will see what each group can do to assist.”

Romaine was killed during what the police initially claimed was a shoot-out with gunmen while in search of Taliban, whose real name is Norris Brown.

Taliban has built a reputation for extorting money from buses which operate from Kingston to Lawrence Tavern, which caused a one-day strike by bus crews last week Tuesday.

But residents insist that there was no gunfight mid-morning Monday, when Romaine was killed. Taliban, they claim was not around.

Romaine’s father, Byron Edwards, who had just been released from a police lock-up, was apparently the target of the police shooting. He had been held overnight for alleged stealing stereo equipment but was let go without charge.

According to Edwards, he had not long returned home from his night in the police cell. Romaine was glad to see him. The little boy had guineps and offered his father two.

“As I make to take them I hear gunshots through the zinc fence,” said Edwards. “Romaine back was to the zinc fence. Then I saw police. I said, ‘officer you kill me son’ and them shot at me again. I told my other little one, Rishane, not to go outside. My baby mother was so frightened she ask me if I dead because she saw the police.”

Two policemen who were involved in the incident have been taken from frontline duties, transferred out of the area and their guns sent for ballistic and forensic tests. The police Bureau of Special Investigations (BSI) was called in to probe the case.

Forbes described the incident as a ” a tragedy” to be avoid in the future.

“The issue here is that an innocent person has lost his life and we want to prevent it from happening again,” he said.

He refused the assign blame, until after the investigations.

But the real name and the nickname of a particular policeman was on the lips of some residents yesterday. He stood accused of starting the shooting with no one shooting at him or shooting back.

Even the police approach appeared, according to them, unorthodox.

“About 10 o’clock Monday I saw two men, come in a taxi,” said a woman, who declined to give her name. One of the men wore a police uniform. The other is in civilian clothes. Short pants.

They walked to the yard where Byron Edwards lives. Edwards, she said, was standing at the door to the house. Romaine was near to the kitchen with his gift of guineps.

“The police) just start to shoot through the fence at Byron,” the woman to claimed to have witnessed the incident. “Five shots caught Romaine and kill him on the spot.”

It took several reports, she said, for the police to respond and even then, it was not the Lawrence Tavern but the Constant Spring police, who came.

Yesterday, with the police top brass in the community, a large crowd of sympathisers gathered outside the two-bedroom blue and red house where the boys was killed. They cursed the police, mostly.

Five holes, apparently from bullets, were in the zinc fence, about a foot from the ground.

In the yard, between the small kitchen and the front room door, dried blood, partially covered with dirt, marked the spot where Romaine fell and died.

In the afternoon, Sergeant Donald Terrylong of the police community relations unit spoke to the dead boy’s family. The police chaplaincy and victim support unit have also been called in to help with the counselling.