Bartons residents dispute fatal police shooting
PERSONS claiming to be witnesses have dismissed a police report on the fatal shooting of Otis Simms, 26, who the cops said was one of two men who engaged them in a shoot-out at Bartons, St Catherine on February 25.
The police said that following the shoot-out, a firearm was taken from Simms, but witnesses claimed that he was running away from the police when he was killed.
A 15 year-old teenage girl, who was accidentally shot by the police during the chase, told the Observer that she saw two men running and three men firing guns at them. She said she then realised that the three men firing guns were policemen, after they entered the square at Seven Miles, Bartons.
“I was leaving my grandaunt’s house to go and fetch my father’s tool pan at our house across the road when I saw two young men running from up Bamboo Ridge Road towards me. I looked to see why they were running and saw three men firing guns at them,” the teenager said.
But according to the Constabulary Communication Network (CCN), Simms and an accomplice who were wanted on shooting charges were seen by the police during an operation carried out by the St Catherine South police at about 2:45 pm on February 25.
On the approach of the police, the CCN said, the two men reportedly opened fire with handguns and during an ensuing shoot-out, Simms was shot and a Smith and Wesson revolver serial number 41047 with one live round and two spent shells taken from him.
The CCN said that the St Catherine South police believe that the other man was also shot but escaped in bushes.
The teenager told the Observer that she ran back into her grandaunt’s yard after she saw the policemen firing at Simms and the other man. She said that she felt a stinging pain on the back of her left thigh, then realised that she had been shot.
She bawled out to her father who notified the police that she had been shot and she was taken to the Spanish Town hospital in a police car.
Janet Martin, the teenager’s mother, said that her daughter who still has the bullet in her thigh and is using crutches, has been unable to attend high school since she was shot.
“I am taking her to a private doctor as she is crying for pain and cramps. If she is able to go back to school on Monday, I will have to hire a taxi to take her to and from school,” she said.
Rupert Richards is the proprietor of a grocery shop in the square at Seven Miles, Bartons and it was on the road before his shop that Simms, who was shot seven times by the police, collapsed.
“The first gunshot I heard, I thought it was a tyre burst then I heard several more shots. I asked somebody to close the shop door. Some men who were sitting on the piazza outside my shop ran. I heard the little girl crying daddy daddy. I saw two men running and the police running. I did not see the men shooting at the police,” Richards said.
A fish vendor, who identified herself as Miss Esmie, who was walking from Bartons square on to the Bamboo Ridge road at the time of the shooting, told the Observer that she heard a loud explosion, then saw someone run past her towards the square. Three men next came around the corner headed in the direction of the square, then she heard two more explosions. She hurriedly walked to the top of the hill where she realised that the back of her blouse, skirt and the outside of the container with the fish were splattered with blood,” she said.
“I heard pow then someone run past me and say me dead to ….. (expletives deleted).
“After that three men came around the corner and I heard two more pow pow. I said it must be police firing gunshot and continued walking fast up the hill. When I got to the top of the hill I was crying and praying,” the woman said.
She said that people who asked her what had happened, pointed out that her clothes and the outside of the container with the fish was splattered with blood.
Simms’ mother, Gladys Jackson, who has been on medication since his death, said that her son was not a criminal. She said he left her house for Bannister to visit Shauna Kay, the mother of his six-year-old son, about 35 minutes before he was shot.
Jackson said that Simms was sickly and had suffered from epilepsy after the tailgate of a truck dropped on his head at the juice factory where he used to work in Old Harbour.
“Three years ago the doctor stopped him from working because he said there was a bloodclot in his head,” Jackson said.