Stann Creek man claims police brutality

Tonight there is a disturbing allegation of police brutality emerging from the Stann Creek District, which has left one man missing an eye. According to twenty-three year old store clerk Marcelino Chun, on the evening of Saturday July second, he was walking along the Stann Creek Valley Road towards his home in Hope Creek Village when two officers stopped him and started to question him about drugs. Chun reports that when he told the officers he didn’t have any drugs on him, the questioning started to get rough.

Marcelino Chun, Alleges Police Brutality
?While I was on the street he came over and started to harass me about drugs that someone told him that I have drugs and I deal drugs around the area. And due to the answer that I couldn?t give him, he hit me in the eye with the barrel of the gun. And I was there, trying to pick up myself and he was placing the gun on me, ?My bwai stay down, stay down.? And then he turned around and asked a question, he said, ?So who do you think have drugs around the area,? and I told him ?I don?t know,? and that?s when he took the gun and said, ?you don?t know? and he placed the gun in my eye and like screw the gun in my eye.?

?The surgery went through yesterday. Dr. Hoy told me I won?t be able to see with my eye anymore. Yesterday he did a surgery and took off everything inside because it was bruised.?

Janelle Chanona
?They removed the eye??

Marcelino Chun
?Yeah, they removed the eye. And right now, he was planning to say that it could only be replaced, to be a natural eye, to be replaced by a shell like to look like a natural eye.?

Janelle Chanona
?What do you want to happen now Marcelino??

Marcelino Chun
?I would like to say?I would like the higher people to get involved with this thing because I am not a criminal to justice or anything. Everybody in my village know me to be a straight person, I do no wrong to no society.?

According to Chun, a twelve-gauge shotgun was the weapon used to hurt him. While Chun maintained to News Five that he did not get a look at the officers, we understand that he did file a formal complaint with the Dangriga Police Station and intends to do the same with personnel from the Internal Affairs Unit of the department. This afternoon, Police Press Officer G. Michael Reid says they are aware of the allegations, but state that so far their initial findings have revealed that at the time of the incident Chun was totally intoxicated and while investigations into the matter are ongoing, so far there is no evidence to suggest that there was any police involvement in his injury.