Cops kill motorist in Ladyville
Only a week after a police constable killed a man in Caye Caulker under questionable circumstances, another civilian is dead at the hands of law enforcement authorities. The drama unfolded in the wee hours of Saturday morning when cops arrested a suspect outside a dance at Celina’s club in Ladyville. The crowd reacted negatively and in the confusion of confrontation that followed, a number of shots rang out from the departing police vehicle. News 5’s Jacqueline Woods has more.
Leslie Flores, Cousin of Deceased
“It is important that we understand Darnell as somebody who has tried to live a positive life. And that is what the family wants to get across, because too often we hear that the victim was a very disorderly person and things like that. Darnell was not that type of person. Darnell did not smoke and he did not drink. He has two sons and he has a wife. He is a taxi driver, who is trying to make an honest living.”
Jacqueline Woods, Reporting
Twenty-eight year old Darnell McDonald was driving this white mini van when a bullet, believed to have come from a policeman’s gun, ripped through the windshield and caught McDonald in his neck.
Orson Picart, Witness/Shooting Victim
“All I heard was like three shots being fired, and before I know it, in matter of three or four seconds, we had Darnell hit in his throat. He leaned to the right hand side of his chair and you know when you turn on a faucet how water will run that dah how the blood pour.”
“By that time, I noh know what hit me, but something hit me on the right temple. And then that kind of knock me out unconscious for two or three seconds and I couldn’t focus well and I start to bleed. So I the bleed and he the bleed and the vehicle still the go. Indio deh inna the backseat and Indio the like, yo dah weh happen? Yo dah weh happen? And Darnell’s brother replied, like yo, the police just killed my brother, they just killed my brother; and that dah all I could hear.”
Twenty-tree year old Orson Picart, along with Darnell and Selwyn McDonald and another friend, had just turned onto the Northern Highway after leaving Celina’s Bar in Ladyville, when they came upon a grey police pickup parked on the highway. Picart says the police were trying to take a man in custody, but the young man, identified as Michael Arnold, was putting up some kind of resistance.
Orson Picart
“By this time, myself, along with Indio, Darnell and Darnell’s brother, who was seated in the front seat, we were trying to get back. So we were like, okay it is easier for us to get on the highway and then divert to the right of the highway and pass the police vehicle that was parked in the middle of the highway so that we could actually go home. So we tried to do that. By the time we turned right, the police had already put the young man to the back of the vehicle, so then they started to drive off. So we say, okay, since they start to drive off let we come behind them.”
But as both the police vehicle and the mini van started to move away, a group of people, who apparently were upset about the way the police treated Arnold, started throwing bottles and stones at the police vehicle. Although the authorities claim that shots were also fired at them from a vehicle or vehicles travelling behind them, Picart says their vehicle was the only one behind the police and they were not a part of the assault, but simply just trying to get out of the way and home.
Orson Picart
“All I know is that the police press release that was issued Saturday morning stated that myself was in a crowd throwing bottles at the police officers. Now I noh need to vouch for my character, everybody know me. At this time, I was in the vehicle, in the passenger side behind Darnell. How in the world I could be out there throwing bottles at the law enforcements when I was in the vehicle?”
Picart says the only gunshots he heard came from the police firing at their vehicle.
Orson Picart
“I heard from one police officer at the K.H.M.H. that they fired a warning shot. They fired a warning shot, but I would expect that if you fired a warning shot that you wouldn’t fire three shots in a row, pow, pow, pow. And one of those, the first one suppose to be a warning shot, it doesn’t make any sense to me, a warning shot is supposed to be pow.”
Selwyn McDonald, who was sitting next to his brother, says they were about fifty to seventy yards behind the police vehicle when the police started to shoot. McDonald says he does not know how many officers fired shots, but clearly remembers seeing one policeman firing his gun.
Selwyn McDonald, Witness
“The only shot I heard and I saw with my own eyes was the shot from the policeman in front of us to keep off the crowd after they had this guy in custody. After they put this guy in the vehicle, the crowd was coming behind the Ford Ranger truck that the police were in and they fired a shot to keep the crowd off. And then after the police fired the shot, they moved off a little slowly and then bottles and stones were throwing. I guess it was from the people outside, which knew the guy from Ladyville. But the stones and bottles were not thrown from the vehicle behind the police.”
Jacqueline Woods
“Now the police, were they standing in the pan of the vehicle?”
Selwyn McDonald
“The person, who fired the shot, the police was standing and he was in a civilian clothes with a camouflage jacket. A fat guy with his face, his beard was trimmed in a certain design.”
McDonald says before the police started to shoot, his brother blew the horn to try and get the police to move to one side so they could get out of harms way, but once the authorities started to shoot, his brother tried his best to get out of the way.
Selwyn McDonald
“The first shot that shoot, shot outside of the vehicle and it passed it like outside from where he was driving. So I told him to slow down and go on the side, but same time he heard the first shot, he duck behind the wheel to put the vehicle on the side, and same time coming back to see he wasn’t driving off the road, three more shots licked off from the policeman and the third shot hit him straight to the head.”
Jacqueline Woods
“According to the police, the commissioner has launched an investigation into the shooting to determine what transpired. That information will then be handed to the Director of Public Prosecutions, who will then decide whether or not any police officer will be charged.”
Orson Picart
“I just want to tell the Commissioner of Police that this is something you have to look into right. We need some justice right now. That’s all we the look forward to because Darnell wasn’t a person…we weren’t in any way involved in any raucous with the police officers, we were trying to get home.”
According to police, in addition to Picart and McDonald, a third man, named Claude Jones, also received gunshot wounds in the incident. Police say Jones was in the crowd outside the bar.
