Residents in Pinewood Gardens yesterday threatened to take matters into their own hands if the police officers they allege "shot their brother" are not brought to justice.
Emotions in the area are still raw four days after Deron Bethel was killed following a run in with police a short distance from his home.
Last evening, Deron's griefstricken mother, Diana Bethel, supported by dozens of her neighbours and her son's friends held a press conference in front of her home.
"What I am looking for, I need some answers why they shot my son," she said.
Mrs Bethel said she believes that the officers were looking for another person at the time of the incident. But, she said, the officers should have identified themselves.
"I had a twenty years healthy young man working, just came from Paradise Island on his job and he left a young lady five and a half months pregnant. I need justice and I need answers. My child was working doing his part as a father to that child."
Mrs Bethel said that although she had a meeting with Police Commissioner Paul Farquharson on Tuesday, she has only seen one other officer who stopped by from the Urban Renewal Programme. As of yet,
she said, police have not confirmed a cause of death.
"I know they shoot my child," she said. Mrs Bethel said her son may have had his problems, but he had never been to prison, never been convicted and had a clean police record.
"If they wanted to shoot they should have shot a tyre," she said.
Eyewitnesses insist that the officers did not identify themselves as they approached Deron's car. They claimed that officers said that they had shot the "wrong nigga."
They said it was only after the car came to a stop by the park that the men identified themselves as plainclothed police officers.
The residents say that they will not accept any police suggestion that Deron behaved in a threatening manner or that he died as a result of the impact of the crash.
Neighbours shouted obscenities about the police force. "The fact remains that one bullet wound caused his death, he died as soon as he got shot – they talking a bunch of foolishness. This am no dog, this ain no cat, this a nigga, this our brethren, No accident cause this, if you try to knock down somebody, why you going backwards; why you reversing?" they asked.
The man added that Deron did exactly what anyone else would have done in that situation.
"Listen to the news everything you hear is a white Sentra doing robberies, so someone come out with a gun; I'd be gone too. Suppose he had a baby in that car. This ain no game, that could have been anyone of us."
"Right now we can't get no justice, but the devil is a liar.
Right now they need to come and give justice, we don't need to hear from nobody. We need to hear what happen, how it happened and we need to go on with our life.
"If we don't get it. We ga come and find out. If we ga to come down on Bay Street to the House of Assembly and tell Mother Pratt and the Prime Minister the devil is a liar," said one resident who is a spokesman for the community.
By CARA BRENNEN Tribune Staff Reporter
