THE man accused of fatally hitting a police corporal and injuring two highway patrol officers in a smash-up on Highway 2000 two weeks ago has been formally charged with manslaughter.

Peyton Lawrence, 22, of Kingston appeared before the Spanish Town Resident Magistrate’s Court last Tuesday and was offered bail of $150,000.

“He is expected to be back in court early next year,” said Sergeant Winchester Watson of the Portmore Traffic Division.

Police corporal Lesley Smith, who was assigned to the Frankfield Police Station in Clarendon, died after Lawrence’s Rover motorcar hit the policeman and rammed into a parked patrol car on October 17.

Smith, who was standing with his back to the road, talking with the other policemen – Sergeant Robert Sewell and Constable Richard Walker – from the Highway Patrol Division, was hoisted into the air and flung several feet away.

Smith was pronounced dead at the Spanish Town Hospital.

The two occupants of the speeding car, Lawrence and his mother, and the two traffic cops sustained minor injuries.

Yesterday, Smith’s widow, Lloella Bartley-Smith, told the Observer that since her husband’s death she has been receiving support from May Pen police officers.

“The police have been very kind. They have been taking me up and down,” she said. “I was supposed to receive some money the other day for me and the two children but I have not received it yet,” she said.

Corporal Smith was the 13th cop killed in 2005.