The Royal Bahamas Police Force is facing another suit after a couple at the wrong place, at the wrong time is alleging one of them was assaulted by officers as they were trying to flee the area where gunshots were being fired.
Felix Cleare and his girlfriend Sherelle Hopkins say they never thought in a million years that they could get arrested for attempting to get out of harms way and, to add insult to injury, he was assaulted by police after he was pulled over and questioned why he was being arrested.
While the couple was never charged, they say they were locked up for 48 hours and then released without explanation and now they have retained the services of Attorney Carlson Shurland.
The couple said on Thursday, December 23, 2010, they were parked in a car on the west side of the Running Mon Marina in the area of the boat ramp around 11:30 p.m. talking when a boat pulled up on east side of the marina.
Hopkins noticed that there were people coming off of the vessel and not long after that they heard gunshots.
“Then I heard when somebody said, ‘stop the boat, stop the boat’ and then the guy ran and I guess when they fired the shots he run the boat on the rocks,” Cleare recalled.
“And she (Hopkins) was like, ‘let’s get from in the back here.’ So I turn the car around, headed out and the police car stopped me.”
Two males and a female were in the marked police car, they said.
