Dangriga man goes berserk, stabs policeman to death
On Saturday evening an off duty police constable from Dangriga, twenty-five year old Ever Morales, lost his life after he was attacked and stabbed numerous times to the chest and back. The perpetrator has been identified as twenty-five year old Giovanni Tasher. According to a police press release, after Tasher killed Morales, the man then turned on the officers who came on the scene. To subdue Tasher, the cops fired several shots which found their mark in his right leg. He remains in the K.H.M.H. under police guard. The report went on to say that Tasher is mentally deranged and was committed to the Rockview Mental Facility on Friday, but that a family member took him out of the institution and returned him to Dangriga. It seems like a tragic mistake by a family too eager to regain custody of a loved one, but today when the Tashers visited our studios they say they had been living in fear of Giovanni for a week and went to the police numerous times for assistance.
According to Giovanni’s sister, Salome, the whole thing began on Sunday, February twenty-fifth when her brother came home after lunch and said he was not feeling well. They say he started acting strangely, saying that somebody did something to him and that he is not well. Then on Thursday things took a turn for the worse when Giovanni began behaving violently, attacking his grandmother and aunt. The family went to the police for help and police officers would eventually trick Giovanni into going to the station where they detained him and placed him in a cell. On Friday, police and family members took the young man to the hospital. There doctors gave him a sedative, but it did not last very long and Giovanni ran away from the hospital. When he was caught and they tried to take him back to the hospital, Giovanni turned on his own sister, scratching her to the face and body. Police and medical authorities eventually transported Giovanni to Rockview, but when his brother went to visit him at the institution on Saturday he says Giovanni slipped past security, ran out of the compound, and into his truck.
Salome Tasher, Giovanni’s Sister
“Right now the police got my brother hold because they seh he gone fi he. My brother just gone and visit. He just gone visit, I mean he noh sign nothing, he noh gone there with a gun seh I come ker my brother home. You know the police they have my brother hold and they want charge ah, that wrong something wrong with them police.”
“My brother seh when he tell ah that you have to tek di pills, whatever and he tell ah he noh di tek it, he tell ah he want to go home. My brother tell ah he can’t go home, these people wah help you, you have to stay yah. And my brother she he tell ah him ma, my mom, and Salome di come fi you. He just tell ah that fi mek he calm down. And he seh no, if I can’t go from yah with you, you noh going neither and he grab ah and he hold on to ah tight.”
“My brother told him wait here, I’m gonna go get the food and when the security guard open the door, Giovanni Tasher ran out and walk straight in the truck and sit in there and wait for my brother to get in there.”
“He said when he got in the truck, he looked back, no security guard, no nurse, nobody came out, like they people must know that this boy noh crazy, they must know that something else wrong with this boy because nobody come out fi help ah. So my brother says he never had no choice but get in the truck and drive off.”
Fearing what the young man will do when he returned home, the family says they once again went to the police for assistance.
Salome Tasher
“I said, you guys have to do something because this bwai wah hurt somebody and they dah like, that inna fi we hand. They seh because they mi done ker up deh and they can’t help we again. That dah weh Sgt. Chun tell me, that he can’t help me, that he can’t help we, that inna fu we hands. I mean Kendra, what can we do, somebody like that get like that out and the police can’t assist us. I mean, come on, what can we do?”
Goldburn Montero, Giovanni’s Brother
“He haul ih hand out a my hand and duck down and haul two beer pint and fire after me. When he fire the first one after me I duck. When he fire the next one, I run more on the street mek he noh ketch me and from deh he just start to behave wah kinda way in the yard, di make some funny kind of noise.”
“I really get scared then and I tell my step-sister you really have to go to police because then he wah get violent because from the time he start do the stabbing up thing with the fork and stick, I done know the next move he wah hold an edge tool weh wah really bore somebody.”
When they got nowhere with police, Salome says she, her mother and aunt locked themselves in her house across the street from where Giovanni was and could only watch in horror as the young man turned to his other victim, P.C. Ever Morales.
Salome Tasher
“When I looked I saw a man without shirt and a red pants, which was the police and I saw when that man jumped backway, throw himself backway. But at this point I didn’t see my brother, but all I could say to my mom, he was fighting with that man. We couldn’t say that he was stabbing the man because we didn’t see him with any knife. I heard somebody bawl and I saw my brother. I just stood at the window because I didn’t want to come outside.”
“If they mi do come and help we, that officer would have been here today day. And I want to sympathise with the family Kendra because I noh know what kind of — I noh know how that family feel against my family right now because we are really stressed out right now. We don’t know what is wrong with this boy and I want to sympathise with the family and let them know that we feel for them because we were asking for the police to help and they didn’t come. I want the family to know that. My brother didn’t just go after that policeman; it was anybody that was in his way. That policeman was just coming up the street at the wrong time.”
Cynthia Andrews, Giovanni’s Mother
“I am very, very sad about it. It really hurts; we are full of sorrow right now. I can’t take it no more because I know that’s not my son. It really hurts us very much.”
Tonight law enforcement authorities maintain that the family should have never allowed Giovanni to leave Rockview and that authorities did what they could to help the family and young man. This afternoon Giovanni’s mother and uncle visited him at the hospital. They report that he is handcuffed to the bed and is not talking much.
P.C. Morales had been with the police department for thirteen years. He is survived by his mother Rosa, father Victor, one son Brandon Pinelo, six brothers and five sisters. Funeral services for the constable will be held on Tuesday at the Roman Catholic church in San Jose/San Pablo village in the Orange Walk district. The Tashers say they have not been in contact with the Morales family, but that if they need any financial assistance to please get in touch with Salome at 601-6831.
