THE TRAGEDY which befell the Dennis family of Olympic Gardens in June 1997 is a story in search of an ending. As we have told it in two episodes printed yesterday and on Tuesday it started with a fatal police shooting of three-year-old Gervis, infant son of the family.
The saga continues in a long-running mockery of the judicial process which began as a Coroner's inquest a year and nine months ago in the Sutton Street Court in downtown Kingston.
As the Dennises tell it, they have been to the court 17 times since the inquest started on June 21, 1999, nearly two years after Gervis was killed, apparently in the crossfire of a shoot-out. Adjournment after adjournment have prolonged the proceedings because police witnesses have failed to attend court.
The case is pertinent in the aftermath of the Braeton killings; especially so in the wake of the controversy stoked by the reports of Amnesty International. These relate to what are deemed as quasi-judicial killings by the police and the damning accounts of the autopsies on the Braeton Seven. The wounds described seem to contradict the police version of a shoot-out.
The official repudiation of Amnesty still leaves us with the stated intention of the authorities to deal with the Braeton killings by way of a Coroner's inquest. Hence the pertinence of what the Dennis family has had to endure since 1997.
We have cited the long delays and obstacles which make the Coroners' inquests a frustrating futility. That is why we repeat the demand for an official enquiry into a tragedy that cries out for justice.
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