GRANTS Pen residents have reacted angrily to a recent ruling, by the coroner’s court, that the security forces were not criminally responsible for the death of community leader Andrew Phang.

Among those who have bitterly expressed their disappointment is Phang’s 56 year-old mother, Una Stephens. The elderly woman is adamant that her son was murdered and no official ruling on the matter can convince her otherwise.

“Them murder him. How man inna underpants fi have gun?” she asked.

“Them handcuff him and shot him. After that them take off the handcuff,” the distraught mother with tear-filled eyes told the Observer during a recent visit to the area.

She got news of the ruling via the media, she said, and was reduced to tears as a result of the negative light in which her deceased son has been portrayed.

And member of parliament for the area, Delroy Chuck, has raised concerns about the coroner’s court, which made the ruling that no one was criminally responsible for Phang’s death.

“It is not clear how many eyewitnesses appeared before the court; we need to find out,” he told the Observer. “There was a strong case to charge the officers involved in what witnesses stated was a cold-blooded killing.”

According to the MP, though he had his dark side, Chang was a “pleasant” man.

“Andrew was a pleasant young man to me. There was no doubt that he had a dark side to him, but I must say with authority that I saw very little of that dark side,” he said. “As to allegations of him being involved with drugs, to the best of my knowledge he owned no real estate and very little personal property.”

Andrew Phang, whose real name was Andrew Stephens, was shot and killed by members of the now-disbanded Crime Management Unit (CMU), in October 2001, at Pembroke Hall, St Andrew.

Police say they went to a house in Meadowbrook Estate to conduct a raid, and as they approached, Phang opened fire at them and then managed to escape. He was cornered, according to police reports, about four hours later at a house at Annandale Avenue in Pembroke Hall.

Lawmen claim Phang engaged them in a gunbattle, during which he was shot. He later died in the Kingston Public Hospital.

Police say they recovered an AK90 high-powered rifle from Phang.

As a result of the police’s slaying of their area don, Grants Pen residents staged a massive demonstration in the area shortly after Phang was killed.

Though there was no demonstration when news of the ruling broke, several persons voiced their disgust at the latest developments.

“No justice no deh fi poor man pickney,” one man complained, adding that if it was “a red man pickney from uptown” who had been killed by the police, someone would have been jailed by now.

“Andrew Phang was murdered by agents of the state,” one elderly man opined.

And a woman, who claimed to have been the slain area don’s former schoolmate, said after his killing a number of persons who claimed to be eyewitnesses had came into the area to tell them that Andrew had been murdered.

“People who claim say them see, tell we say a murder the police dem murder him with hand cuff pa him hand,” the woman said, in between puffs of her marijuana spliff.