For the second time in three months, National Security Minister Peter Phillips has had to apologise for a fatal police shooting.

He said sorry, yesterday, to the family of 17 year-old Damion Thomas whom cops killed Sunday night while responding to an argument between the St Thomas teen and his grandfather.

“This is the sort of tragedy that should never have happened,” Phillips told the boy’s father, Dalton Thomas, during a visit to the Thomas home. The minister was in the parish for a tour of its police stations.

The young boy’s distraught father cried uncontrollably as he begged the minister to ensure that justice was meted out to his son’s killers.

“The police suppose to protect we. Him kill the boy true him rude?” Thomas asked an obviously concerned Phillips, who assured the teen’s relatives and friends that investigations were being speedily carried out into the incident.

The teenager, who lived in the Capture Land section of Seaforth Town, reportedly spat in his grandfather’s cup of tea and the elderly man made a complaint at the nearby police station. According to the official police report, the 17 year-old attacked a lawman with a knife after cops went to the home to settle the dispute between him and his grandfather.

“.The teenager became boisterous and attacked one of the lawmen with a knife, upon which the lawman pulled his firearm and opened fire, hitting him,” the police’s information arm reported on January 11.

The CCN said the boy died on the spot after a group of angry citizens beat his grandfather and prevented lawmen from removing the teen’s body.

But residents refuted the cops’ version of the incident, saying the young boy was shot by lawmen after he had run for more than a mile. They staged a demonstration, they said, to protest what they saw as an unnecessary use of force.

Two police officers were removed from front-line duties, the Bureau of Special Investigations was called in to investigate and, in keeping with the police force’s new use-of-force policy, Commissioner Francis Forbes had received a report on the incident by Wednesday.

A post mortem will be carried out on Thomas’ body next Thursday.

On October 25 of last year, a police team opened fire on a car carrying three elderly residents of Flankers, St James, killing two and injuring the third. Three days later, Phillips and Police Commissioner Francis Forbes visited the community to apologise to the family and friends of David Bacchus, 63, and 66 year-old Cecil Brown. Audrey Stephens, 65, was injured during what appeared to have been a police operation gone terribly wrong. Cops paid for the elderly men’s funeral expenses and the file on the shooting was submitted to the Director of Public Prosecutions in November.