| UPDATED: Lindeners shot through heart with "bronze-capped" rounds - independent pathologist | | Print | |
| Written by Kwesi Isles |
Wednesday, 25 July 2012 12:51
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Independent pathologist Professor Hubert Daisley says preliminary results from Wednesday’s autopsies on the three Linden protesters indicate that the men were all shot through the heart with “bronze-tipped” rounds and not rubber pellets as the police contend.
The Trinidad and Tobago expert witnessed the autopsies conducted by government pathologist Dr. Nehaul Singh on the men killed in clashes with the police a week ago.
According to Professor Daisley, the three men all died in similar fashion with two shot in the chest and the other through the back.
“One of those persons was also shot in the left leg and the right leg with the fatal injury for that person being in the anterior (frontal) chest penetrating both the lung and the heart and causing profuse bleeding. The other two individuals, one was shot in twice in the back, one in the lower left back and one in the upper left back. The shot in the upper left back penetrated the heart and the lung and he also exsanguinated,” the pathologist explained.
The third individual, he said, had one shot to the anterior left chest.
“The metal fragments in two of the cases look almost identical and there was a little variation in the other metal fragment that went into the chest. Of course these are going to be verified by ballistics to determine what calibre weapon was used but two of them looked pretty similar and probably they were being fired upon by multiple people, probably they all had similar weapons or the ballistics might tell you from one weapon,” Professor Daisley said.
Asked whether the wounds were caused by plastic or rubber pellets as the police claim the expert gave an emphatic no.
“These were metal, they were capped with bronze-looking cap, almost gold but I think it is bronze, and the core of these were lead. These were not rubber by any chance, they were metal,” he stated.
According to him, one of the slugs recovered from a leg wound had flattened out like “a Trinidad ten-cent piece” while the other warheads looked like “missiles from a handgun” which he opined may have been a low velocity weapon.
“They entered but they didn’t exit and we were able to locate them. We were able to retrieve the missiles or metal fragments and they were given to the investigating officer.”
On whether there was any difference of opinion on the findings between him and Dr. Singh the visiting pathologist said there was no deviation.
“The thing is Dr. Singh was conducting the autopsy, I was just observing and we had discussions as we went along but what I’ve said here there’s no deviation from what was found by Dr. Singh,” he stated.
Professor Daisley’s involvement was organised by the AFC. Lindeners have called for the police involved in the shootings to be charged with murder as one of their conditions to come off the streets. The protests initially intended for five days against the government's move to increase electricity rates in Linden is now in its eighth day.
