Tyrone Reid, Staff Reporter
THE POLICEMAN involved in the beating and subsequent death of Corporal Grantley Waite is awaiting his fate as the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) awaits the post-mortem report from the police.
The police are in turn waiting on the pathologist to complete the report.
A spokesperson from the Office of the DPP, told The Gleaner on Monday that without the post-mortem report the DPP could not make a ruling.
After Corporal Waite, 48, succumbed to his injuries last December, Commissioner of Police Lucius Thomas promised to forward to the DPP by December 21 last year, the results of an investigation by the Professional Standards Branch of the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF). The documents from the commissioner's office also included signed reports from the doctors involved in treating the corporal.
Karl Angel, director of communications in the Jamaica Constabulary Force, told The Gleaner that the commissioner made good on his promise.
FILES RETURNED
However, Mr. Angel said the DPP returned the file to the police earlier this month and requisitioned that the post-mortem report be sent with it. "We are in possession of the file and we are awaiting the post mortem report," Mr. Angel said.
When The Gleaner contacted the Legal Medicine Unit, none of the pathologists were available. However, a representative told The Gleaner that the post-mortem must have been done since Corporal Waite had been buried. However, she pointed out that the doctor might not yet have written the report.
Initial reports were that Corporal Waite's colleagues beat him when he sought a drink of water from the barracks at the Montego Bay Police Station at about midnight on November 15. Cpl. Waite, who was attached to the Half-Way Tree Police Station, was hospitalised at Cornwall Regional Hospital on Wednesday, November 16, 2005, with spinal injuries and fractures.
He was subsequently transferred to the Kingston Public Hospital. Thirty-one days later Cpl. Waite succumbed to his injuries.
At the time of the controversial incident, the policeman had been with his sister in Green Island, Hanover, where he was recuperating on a 10-day sick leave for a head wound, for which he had received eight stitches.
Corporal Waite was a 30-year veteran of the JCF.
