A 62-year-old blocker maker of Diamond said he was maltreated and shot on his property by whom he could only describe by their actions, as gangsters.
Cornelius John of Diamond told News784 that on the afternoon of April 13th, he was sitting on a block in his unfinished porch when three persons, one woman and two men dressed in jeans, t-shirts and masks and caps, entered his property without prior warning.
He said the taller of the men walked up to him and began kicking him in the stomach which caused him to defecate on himself.
“I could not recognize his face because he was wearing a cap and a mask, so I could not make out who he was”.
He told News784 that the man, who was tall and well-built, took his actions even further while he was lying on the ground writhing in pain.
“While I was lying in pain on the ground, he pulls out his gun, cranked it and told me; you want to kill the senator, you want to kill the senator?” and he proceeded to hold down my left foot and shoot me in it”.
The 62-year Hypertensive told News784 that the woman who entered his property along with the other two men pointed a gun to his face and told him if he called her name in any conversation, she would shoot him in the mouth. He identified the woman to be Government Senator and Deputy Speaker of the House of Parliament, Ashelle Morgan.
When pressed by News784 as to how he knew it was Senator Morgan, John replied. ‘It was not hard to identify her’.
“I recognize her built, her voice, I looked at her, she grew up around here, I knew her since she was a child, she lives up the road not too far from me”.
John said after he told her, look at my mouth, shoot me in it; they (perpetrators) took off up the road.
“After the pain started to become unbearable, I shouted you shoot me in my foot, people started coming out their houses, and they ran off in the direction where she Morgan lives”.
The traumatised victim said a neighbour helped him band the wound so he would not bleed to death, that neighbour, he said, called the police, who later arrived at the scene of the incident and took him to the hospital.
He spoke of accusations that he is abusive to his wife; “if that is the case, why did the police not come and deal with me? Why did they (the perpetrators) take the law into their own hands?” he said.
“Why did they come to my house and did not go to the police, the police is the fittest one to come and caution me, but they took the law into their own hands, are they above the law?” “They come and shoot me in my own house, and now people want to make me look like a beast”.
John says until the police deal with the matter in the way it should be dealt with, he needs compensation for the injury suffered, his time lost from work, earnings lost as a result of not being able to work and for the trauma, psychological and otherwise which he is now going through.
“Day and night I wonder which time my life would be taken, remember she said she would shoot me in my mouth if I call her name, well am calling her name Ashelle Morgan, so now am waiting”, John said.
News784 reached out to Senator Ashelle Morgan; she did return our calls.
Morgan was appointed Government Senator and Deputy Speaker of the House of Parliament following the 2020 general elections in St Vincent.