MORE than 100 angry relatives and friends of Andrew Wilson, the taxi operator who was shot dead by the police Sunday night, yesterday demonstrated in front of the office of Police Commissioner Francis Forbes.

Forbes later assured them that full investigations would be carried out in the matter.

At the same time, the police chief reiterated that the constabulary does not train anyone to kill innocent persons.

Wilson was shot dead by the police Sunday night during a high-speed chase along the Spanish Town bypass in St Catherine. He was on his way home from a funeral in Bird’s Hill, Clarendon.

The police reported that Wilson, who was the driver of a vehicle in which a group of men were travelling, was signalled to stop but continued at a high speed and during a chase a shoot-out ensued and he was shot. The police also said one of their service vehicles was shot up during the incident. Three of the men in the car escaped, police say. No guns were recovered during the incident.

However, the protesters, many of them from the Pryce Lane area of Kingston, where Wilson lived, denied the police’s version of the story, alleging that Wilson was murdered in cold blood as he exited his vehicle with his hands above his head.

The protesters held vigil outside the commissioner’s office for over three hours demanding that he leave his office and address them.

Commissioner Forbes, who later emerged from his office, accompanied by senior officers, told the placard-bearing demonstrators that the police have a written policy on the use of force.

“There is only one occasion when a police officer can use deadly force and be morally and legally justified and that is when there is imminent danger to life,” said Forbes.

Forbes, who urged eyewitnesses to give written statements to police investigators, said the truth of the matter lay somewhere between the two sides of the story.

“One man is dead and a police car has been shot up. The truth lies somewhere in between those two versions,” Forbes told the protesters who had gathered on the lawns of his office.

Wilson’s girlfriend, Juline Walker, who was travelling in the front passenger seat of the ill-fated vehicle when the shooting occurred, gave her account of the incident.

“We heard the siren and we continued driving. One of the policeman put his hand through the window and fired one shot and then him (Wilson) stop and come out of the car with him hand up in the air and them shot him,” the woman claimed.

The bereaved woman, who said she had to administered with sedatives on Sunday evening, struggled to continue telling what happened and had to be assisted by an elder sister to prevent her from collapsing.

“Then one a di police tell me fi go on the ground,” Walker said, crying.

The woman said that the cops took at least 25 minutes before taking Wilson to the Spanish Town Hospital and that while driving an officer asked her “Why you never tell him fi stop?”

A man who claimed to be the owner of the car Wilson was driving said, however, that there was no evidence of a shoot-out on his vehicle.

Meanwhile, Wilson’s father, Joseph, 56, told the commissioner that his son had been a target and was threatened by the police on two occasions.

“Andrew is a target of a particular policeman. He was threatened twice. He stopped at a stoplight at North Street (downtown Kingston) and two men on bikes with guns showing ordered him to stop. When the light changed he drove off because they did not identify themselves as police. When they were chasing him they run up in the back of his car and chip up. Because of that they say they must kill him,” Wilson said.

The protesters left after they were addressed by Forbes.