Ex-cop trial | Victim's aunt says he got one bullet wound in yard
Published:Wednesday | July 12, 2017 | 12:00 AMLivern Barrett
A St Andrew woman testified yesterday that her teenage nephew, Ravin Thompson, had a single bullet wound to the chest when a team of police and soldiers placed him on their vehicle and headed off to the Kingston Public Hospital (KPH).
Andrea Thompson recounted that she climbed aboard the Jamaica Defence Force (JDF) vehicle to accompany the 18-year-old graduate of Norman Manley High School and insisted that he was alive and talking to her.
"I hold Ravin in my hand and told him everything is going to be alright, and he said, 'Auntie, stop crying'," she recalled.
The witness testified that moments later, she felt someone drag her out of the vehicle by one of her legs and remembered her horror when a friend transported her to KPH less than a hour later.
"I was going on really bad because I know that my nephew left the house with one shot," she insisted.
COVERED IN BLOOD
"What about when you got to KPH?" asked prosecutor Jeremy Taylor, as he led the woman through her evidence.
"I saw multiple gunshot [wounds] all over his body," she replied, before adding later that her nephew was covered in blood.
Thompson was giving evidence in the murder trial of former police constable Mark Russell in the Home Circuit Court in downtown Kingston. Ravin died of gunshot wounds he received in July 2007.
According to the St Andrew woman, her nephew was among several persons milling around outside her home in Whitfield Town when a soldier approached a man dressed in a blue merino.
She said the man ran into her yard and, moments later, there was gunfire from a joint police-military patrol, commonly referred to as 'Ratty' in inner-city communities.
"Me run off and then my niece started crying and seh, 'It's Ravin! It's Ravin! He's on the ground!'" she said, giving her account of the circumstances under which Thompson was first shot.
Three JDF soldiers have also testified that on the way to the KPH, Russell and another police constable at the time, Morris Lee, placed an M16 rifle in the teen's hands before shooting him several times.
The trial continues today.