ST JAMES, Jamaica — The policeman who was mowed down during a traffic stop last week Friday is said to be improving.

That’s the word from Superintendent of Police in charge of St James, Eron Samuels, who provided an update during the monthly council meeting of the St James Municipal Corporation on Thursday.

“Some good news that we received yesterday (Wednesday) is that he started to breathe a little better on his own so they started to wean him off the ventilator and moved him from Falmouth to the ICU at Cornwall Regional,” he related to the gathering.

“He’s, however, not out of the woods, he’s still in critical condition,” he clarified.

The constable, he explained, was part of a team coordinating a roadblock on the St John’s roadway when the incident occurred.

“They had received some intelligence about vehicles travelling that space with weapons. Upon seeing that particular Probox, the constable signalled for it to be stopped and he slowed down and then he sped up and hit the constable,” Samuels shared.

According to Samuels, the constable fell between 50-70 metres and sustained different degrees of injuries as a result.

“His jawbone was broken and he has some head injuries. The head injuries are the areas of concern for us. He was admitted in critical condition and placed in the ICU on the ventilator,” he revealed.

The hope is that the injuries will soon heal for the constable.

“There is no specific area of the brain that is damaged but there are small damages all over. Only time will tell how best he will recover from it,” he said.

The driver of the Probox and the car in question are now in custody and the lawman said that they are working to put everything in place in relation to the incident.

“This indeed seems intentional and we have the driver of the vehicle in custody, we have the vehicle as well and we will be prosecuting him as soon as we gather everything because we want to ensure that we do the correct thing,” he said.

He is further hopeful that the incident will not deter lawmen in the division from doing their work which has seen them take  nearly 90 firearms off the streets since the start of the year.

“We really and truly want to ensure that our officers remain committed to doing what they are doing. This will not stop us from trying to rid the streets of weapons and the transportation of weapons in and around the St James division,” Samuels said.