THE BAKER who saw the shooting of Jamar Maynard on April 3, 2012, recounted the entire episode in the Coroner’s Court yesterday, stating that Maynard had no gun when he was shot while running from a police officer.
Testifying in the Coroner’s Inquest into the unnatural death of Maynard, 27, Melvin Alexander Daniel, the court’s lone civilian eyewitness to the shooting, said while he was at work at Parris Bakery, Bridgetown, on the night of April 3, he heard loud voices and went out onto Cheapside Road where he saw four men: two police officers, Maynard and another young man.
“The man holding the gun said ‘go inside dey, this is police business’,” Daniel said, stating this caused him to immediately withdraw back into the bakery.
The baker, who had failed to turn up to the Coroner’s Court on three previous occasions since the inquest began, recalled yesterday that he watched the men through a glass panel on the right wall of the bakery; two were sitting on the sidewalk and two standing, and one of the standing men was pointing a gun at the man sitting in front of him.
“This fella who was in front of the man with the gun said something to the man pointing the gun at him and ran off. The fella ran up on the sidewalk along St Mary’s Church wall and was running going up the road when the man pointed the gun at him and leggo a shot at him. When he let go the shot, the boy stumbled and kept running,” the court heard.
Daniel testified that he heard two more shots and saw a bullet shell under the street light just outside the bakery, before the boy and the man pursuing him with the gun disappeared from his view in the general direction of Jubilee Gardens.
“The man who ran away and was shot was barebacked. He did not have a gun or any other weapon,” stated Daniel, who affirmed that Maynard was shot on the sidewalk outside St Mary’s wall, and that the man who shot him was “short and had size . . . kinda fair-skinned and very aggressive”.
Questioned by Coroner Manila Renee, Daniel, of Branchbury, St Joseph, said when he left work later in the wee morning hours of April 4, he saw blood spattered on the church wall in a semicircle pattern akin to a rainbow, but saw no shells.
Pointing to areas in a series of police photographs, Daniel also related he could not hear what the four men were saying before the shooting occurred.
Noting that the glass panel was a large one through which he could see as far as Jubilee Gardens, Daniel said the two young men were backing him while seated on the sidewalk, while the officers were facing him and could see him looking through the glass.
Daniel, who first missed court because he had to keep his two daughters, also failed to turn up without an explanation on January 10 and was sent a summons, and two weeks ago he sent in a medical certificate declaring he was unable to work.
Yesterday, the coroner, who had earlier called his behaviour “contemptuous”, told him: “This is serious; you’re not coming to work but to court. You seem reluctant to come to court.
“Is everything okay between you and Inspector [John] Annell? Did the police threaten or beat you? . . . I was very concerned about your concerns,” Renee said, to which Daniel replied that there were no longer any concerns.
He also said he did not see witness Mark “Twin Man” Rollins on the night of April 3, 2012, and that the distance between the man firing the shot and the one running was about 25 feet.
• rickyjordan@nationnews.com
