An attorney, who is representing the family of an alleged child abductor who was shot dead in Dominica, is crying foul over the manner in which the police is handling the entire situation, noting that it may be a case of extrajudicial killing.
Kian Alexander, who was described as a ‘suspected lunatic,’ was shot on June 18 almost two weeks after the police said he abducted 12-year-old Kernisha Etienne from her home in the village of Warner on June 7.
He later died of his wounds and as of Wednesday, June 22, 15 days after the incident, the whereabouts of the child remained a mystery.
Speaking on Tuesday (June 21), Tiyani Bihanzin said Alexander’s family was given the run around when they went to identify his body that same day.
He stated that the family waited for four hours to do what normally takes five minutes to complete.
“And it seems to me that this is clear shenanigan by the police given the fact that nobody is clear where the individual had been shot,” he said. “We do not have a forensic pathologist in Dominica. We’ve never had one. What we have, through the benevolence of the Cuban people a pathologist. We understand that maybe we have a pathologist here available from Barbados.”
He added, “the difficulty we are having in a case like this, if there is some allegation of suspicion of government activity, whether it is through their agents, police or otherwise, even sometimes the very doctors in this hospital, we cannot ascertain independently, with any degree of certainty without a family paying exorbitant amount of money to instruct a pathologist to come and hear and act on their behalf…..so it cannot be that the family is told to come and identify a body and they are sitting there with no other instructions to clarify the contradictions of two sets of instructions.”
Behanzin stated that the family understood the state was prepared to do an autopsy without their involvement.
“We know that because of the manner in which the thing was actually carried out,” he explained. “The jury from the inquest, which was opened this morning, were shown the body, which is very unusual. The jury is normally shown the body in the presence of the family who identifies the body. That is lawful conduct.”
According to him based on this, it seems that the shooting and subsequent death of Alexander may be an example of extrajudicial killing.
“And we are saying, we are asking the public to please be mindful, be cognizant of what is going on,” he said.
He noted that he has been involved in similar cases and on many occasions, they took forever to investigate and cannot proceed in the courts.
“We are saying it is unacceptable that being in a democratic country that we have these kinds of machinations taking place and masquerade as if there is some interest in injustice,” the attorney said. “We remain vigilant to ensure that the family receive the questions and answers that they want but this is beginning to look like an extrajudicial killing.”
