Despite a recent civil settlement in the case of CJ Weekes, Lawyer Jomo Thomas continues to advocate for the criminal prosecution of the police officers involved in his death.
During a recent broadcast on Boom 106.9, Thomas detailed the harrowing events that led to Weekes’s demise, emphasizing that the fatal incident began as a high-speed police chase over a minor traffic violation, which ordinarily would have only resulted in a small fine.
The chase proceeded from the Questelles Police Station to Twenty Hill, ending with both Weekes’s motorbike and the pursuing police vehicle going over an embankment.
Weekes survived the initial crash with horrific injuries, including a broken leg and a broken spine, and had to be placed on a strict morphine regimen to manage his extreme pain.
Before he passed away, Weekes managed to tell his mother that the police vehicle had run over him, a claim supported by the first witness on the scene, Andine Douglas, who noted what appeared to be tire marks on Weekes’s white t-shirt.
Thomas highlighted disturbing allegations of a cover-up, stating that police tampered with the potential crime scene by moving their broken vehicle to make it look like it had not gone over the embankment.
Furthermore, Douglas was reportedly summoned to the former prime minister’s office where her phone was confiscated and permanently disabled, seemingly to destroy potential evidence.
Despite these alarming details, a coroner’s inquest ruled that Weekes died by “misadventure,” citing insufficient evidence for criminal culpability.
Thomas strongly criticized former Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) Sejilla McDowall for declaring early on that there was no criminal culpability, effectively rendering the coroner’s inquest an “exercise in futility”.
Although Thomas has formally petitioned the current acting DPP, Dwayne Daniel, to re-examine the case, no further action has been taken against the officers