13-Y-O CRITICAL

An eighth-grade student has been hospitalised with life-threatening injuries to his kidney and intestine after he was reportedly shot by a policeman during an incident his family claim was unprovoked.

The 13-year-old Cedric Titus High student was on the rooftop of a bar adjoining his home in Rio Bueno, Trelawny, on Sunday night, when a uniformed cop inside the venue fired a single bullet that struck him, according to a family member.

“When him get the shot, him run towards him mother and say him get shot,” the boy’s aunt told The Gleaner during an interview yesterday.

He was shot in the stomach and up to late Monday, there was an urgent plea for blood as doctors try to save the boy’s life, his aunt disclosed.

“His kidney and his intestine are damaged and they are in need of 16 bags of blood for him,” she said.

The aunt said the policeman claimed, after the shooting, that he saw a firearm, but she disputed that assertion.

“I would suggest that’s the report he is going to give to get away from it, because him realise that him fire off the firearm, so him want fi use that as disguise,” she asserted.

The aunt claimed, too, detectives who responded to the scene confiscated the telephones of the teenager and his mother without any explanation.

The Independent Commission of Investigations confirmed yesterday that it has commenced a probe into the incident.

“There was a shooting injury in that area and our response team visited the area at the time of the incident,” the police oversight body said yesterday.

Calls to Superintendent Velonique Campbell, commanding officer for the Trelawny Police Division, went unanswered yesterday.

livern.barrett@gleanerjm.com