Victim’s mother: ‘I saw them do it’

While the Police Complaints Authority investigates the shooting deaths of five young men killed by police on Thursday night in Trou Macaque, Laventille, the mother of the youngest victim, 15-year-old Shekeem Francois, told Newsday she witnessed the shooting.

Francois, Kudeim Phillip, 17, Nicolas Barker, 23, Mechack Douglas, 26, and Shaundell St Clair, 20, were all killed by police who said they were searching for Douglas and St Clair, and when they found the men, there was a shoot-out which ended in their deaths.

In contrast to the police version of events, Joanne Francois said while peeping through a window in her home, she watched as her son and the others were killed, despite surrendering.

“I was peeping through the window and I was seeing everything,” the mother told Newsday. “They were telling people to move from the window, but I was not moving.

“I saw my son and he was telling the police, ‘I eh have nothing, I eh have nothing,’ and they still did that to him (kill him). I was calling out to the other one, but he was just lying there on the ground. He was shot about six times. I don’t know how many times my son was shot.

“How could they (police) do that to them? We were telling them that they (Francois and Phillip) were minors and they were telling us to go inside.

“But they shot them and I was right there and I saw them do it.”

Joanne Francois was among relatives of the victims who were awaiting the results of autopsies at the Forensic Science Centre (FSC) in St James. Relatives there told Newsday the five victims had been among a group of 25 liming in the yard of the house, who eventually began going home around 9 pm. Eventually only eight people remained, all playing all fours.

Relatives of the two teenagers said they called them inside, but they asked to play one last game before going home.

It was then, at around 9.30 pm, that police stormed into the yard. Newsday was told three of the people in the yard fled to safety while the five men were killed.

Newsday was told Francois was adopted as a baby, and had grown up with Joanne Francois as his mother. He was a form three student of Morvant Secondary and was described as a happy-go-lucky boy. Relatives also said he and Phillip were best friends and went everywhere together.

“He doesn’t lime anywhere other than in the yard with his grandmother and his mother. The only other place he would go is by his friend’s (Phillip’s) home. Other than that, all he does is go to school whenever there are classes,” relatives said.

Phillip’s relatives told Newsday he was an auto-mechanics student at Servol, who would wake up at 4 every morning to go to his classes. “Servol sent him to Claxton Bay to do an advanced class, because they recognised his potential,” Phillips’ mother told Newsday. “Three of them were picked out of the entire class to do that. They picked him for this semester. The teachers kept pushing him and kept in contact with us.

“Even if it didn’t have any school I would send him just so he would stay off the block.”

As relatives gathered at the FSC yesterday, Barker’s mother, Teresa, was wailing in grief for her slain son. Even in her anguish and rage, she maintained her son was innocent.

“They kill my child just so!” she cried, “He was going to check his partner and allyuh shoot him like a dog!

“My child don’t be on nothing. He doesn’t have a criminal record or anything. You just shooting black people children for nothing. They have children too. You will feel my pain. That is my belly you gone with just so, innocently! What you feel it is? Why did they kill my son? Is it because he is from the ghetto?

“It is not everyone in Laventille bad. I worked and struggled to make sure my children reached somewhere. I work like a dog to make sure they get what they want, just for them not to go on the wrong side. I didn’t even get a grandchild from him and allyuh kill him!”

She said the last time she saw her son was minutes before he was killed, when he checked in on her to see how she was going because she had recently fallen ill and had to go to hospital. She told him she was all right and he went to visit one of his friends who was liming in the yard. His mother said five minutes after that, people called her to say her son had been killed by police.

Douglas’s father expressed confusion over the incident, saying he was told police were searching for his son in relation to a robbery.

“They told me that it was a robbery, but he was home (when) they shot him.

The PCA said in a release it had launched an investigation into the shooting, pursuant to Section 26 of the PCA Act, and its civilian investigators will conduct a probe separate from the police investigation.

EDITOR'S NOTE: In an earlier online version a photograph appeared with this story identifying Nicholas Barker of Sans Souci, Toco as one of the five people shot and killed by police on Thursday. This is incorrect. Nicholas Barker's photograph has since been removed. What now appears is the photograph of Nicolas Barker. Newsday apologies to Nicholas Barker and his family for the error.