Rodriguez family indicates legal action against Police Department

Tyson Rodriguez

The family has indicated that legal action against the police department will be pursued.  Meanwhile, attorney Audrey Matura-Shepherd says that what she observed on Rodriguez’s body is not consistent with the police report.  There were no wounds to his lower extremities to indicate that he had jumped out of a moving vehicle. 

Audrey Matura-Shepherd, Attorney for Rodriguez Family

Audrey Matura-Shepherd

“What the family wants the people to know is that they don’t have a problem if the police wanted to arrest and charge their loved one.  They don’t have a problem with that.  What they have a problem with is how they went about doing it and there are a lot of discrepancies.  For example, the police told the family or gave the impression that this young man tried to escape and we have since gotten very reliable information, some through the police, some otherwise, that he did not try and escape.  He was taken to the Placencia police station and we have reliable witnesses that say he was beaten in a cell there and he was being asked to take them somewhere, show them something and after that escorted by police, they put him in a vehicle and left him.  The person that gave us that bit of information said that was the last time they saw him then they found out that he was dead.  What we want, what the family wants people to know is that when this supposed escape happened he still had his handcuffs on at his back.  So the police wants to give the impression, well at least those, I can’t say all the police, those who had him, that there was a moving vehicle and he jumped out.  I was retained by the family to go and make sure that in the autopsy we were given full access to the body to see what was happening.  There is no scrape on the body to show that he had jumped out of a vehicle, that his legs were scraped up or anything like that, nothing like that.  But we can say what we observed and for which the forensic people will be able to confirm through their medical report that what we observed were injuries, literally bruises on his chest and on his back.  There were scrapes and scratches like from his waste up.  We don’t see any visible injury below it.  It doesn’t mean that maybe he doesn’t have a broken bone or so but we didn’t see any. What the medical report is saying confirms what the family suspects.  He did not die from any drowning.  Based on what they are saying is that it was asphyxia but what they found in him was sand.  It’s as though his face was stuffed in sand, so he lost breath not because he swallowed water.  Like his face was pushed in the sand and he asphyxiated because of sand and the other thing that the death certificate shows that he has multiple traumas on his chest.  So the cause of death they put asphyxia because he inhaled sand.”

As we said earlier, both a criminal and an internal investigation have been launched by the Commissioner or Police. The investigations are headed by Assistant Superintendent Humberto Romero of the Criminal Investigations Branch and Assistant Commissioner, Noel Leal of the Professional Standards Branch.