The Tribune

By RASHAD ROLLE

Tribune Staff Reporter

rrolle@tribunemedia.net

POLICE have identified the man who died in police custody over a month ago as Oral Pinder, a 55-year-old from St Margaret’s Road.

Police Commissioner Ellison Greenslade did not give the man’s cause of death during a press conference yesterday. He noted that his case was still before the coroner.

He added that nothing suggests that there was foul play in Mr Pinder’s death.

Mr Greenslade’s comments came nearly a month after he said authorities would clean up the face of the deceased and circulate a picture of him in the hope that someone would come forward to identify him.

However police never released a photograph of the man.

Yesterday he said: “Subsequent to my last interview with you on that matter of the in-custody death at the Wulff Road Station, I met with the immediate relatives and siblings of the deceased and tried my best to get a positive identification done. The procedures are very different now and so one cannot just turn up and say right, ‘This person that I am looking at is my relative.’ There is a need for documentation. The family I am told has been trying to put together the relevant papers so that they could positively identify him. But I am satisfied that we had a very good conversation.

“There is absolutely nothing there to suggest to me as commissioner that foul play or anything that should cause me concern at this early stage,” he stressed. “The matter is before Her Majesty’s coroner and I am aware that the autopsy has been completed. I am privy to information from that report, but I am not able to disclose that as that is in the purview of Her Majesty’s coroner.”

Following reports of Mr Pinder’s death, concerns were raised because police were slow to release details about him.

Mr Pinder died on Saturday, September 27. On October 2, Mr Greenslade said he was arrested after a businessman reported that he was on his property. He said the man was found lying on the floor of a cell and that he had no reason to suspect foul play.

The man’s death came more than a year and a half after two suspects, Aaron Rolle and Jamie Smith, both died in one weekend while they were detained by police.

The deaths, occurring on February 8 and 9, 2013, sparked a wave of public outrage.

A pathology report found that Rolle died from haemorrhaging and a ruptured intestine, caused by blunt force trauma to the chest.

Attorney General Allyson Maynard-Gibson told The Tribune in May that she had ordered a full progress report from the Department of Public Prosecutions on Rolle’s death, but it is unclear if any charges will be filed.

Last September, a Coroner’s Court jury found Smith’s death at the hands of police to be a lawful killing.