‘Morgue shock’

The family of Kemo Grant, who died in police custody on June 9, was left with more questions than answers after viewing his body at the morgue yesterday.

Father Jeffrey Odle and sisters Kim and Tricia Grant were shocked by the trauma to the body of their loved one.

Odle told the DAILY NATION he last saw Kemo on June 8, hours before he was taken away by the Barbados Police Service. It was the birthday of Kemo’s deceased mother and they were planning a small celebration.

“One eye – I leave my son with two eyes. He come and shout me that night with two eyes, not a scratch on his body. And now, after the eighth of June, today now they called me to see my son with one eye; forehead cut open, burned open; all his neck full of blood and all sorts of things,” Odle said.

Odle said that when he was asked if it is was his son, he walked away. Tricia said they were not allowed to take pictures or ask questions. “What was very noticeable to me, because he was in a bag – white, it was not transparent, but a white bag like a clothes bag that you would put suits in – and what was very noticeable to me was that he did not have a right eye. There was no eye, and my brother had an eye, two eyes,” Tricia said.

“I saw blood at the top of the bag like where his head is, but they only had his face exposed and you can’t see the entire head.”

Tricia said that since the death of her brother, who was arrested in Eagle Hall hours after he spoke to his father, it was “like living in a horror movie – traumatic” and they had not heard from the investigating officer.

Police issued a statement on Kemo Grant’s death on June 9. They said the 29-year-old of Grazettes Main Road, St Michael, was “found unresponsive within the prisoners’ cells at the Central Police Station, Bridgetown, St Michael”.

The statement further said police were making their regulation checks when the individual was discovered motionless. An ambulance was summoned but none was available at that time and he was pronounced dead at the scene by a medical doctor.

Odle said there were eyewitnesses, but people were afraid to come forward.

Tricia said she saw video from Eagle Hall showing her brother.

“He was making a lot of noise in the video. I can’t believe that nobody saw anything,” she said.

The family retained attorneys Martie Garnes and Tyra Trotman, who filed an urgent injunction in June seeking to prevent the general pathologist from performing the autopsy, as well as a substantive application or judicial review application, challenging the coroner’s decision to allow the general pathologist to conduct the autopsy,

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