Not good enough
by MARIA BRADSHAW
CORONER FAITH MARSHALL-HARRIS is “desperately searching” for corroborating evidence in the unnatural death of I’Akobi Maloney.
But she will not get it from the two police officers who were the only ones with the 23-year-old scholar when he died.
She made this observation as she conducted an inquest into Maloney’s death on Thursday, interrupting attorney-at-law Andrew Pilgrim’s cross-examination of one of the police officers, Constable Wendell Walkes.
“It is clear to a blind man on a galloping horse that the two of you sat down and word for word wrote a single statement, and the problem is I don’t really have a corroboration,” she declared.
“I am not saying anything towards the veracity of the statement. I just want to put it out that it is not satisfactory that we only have a single statement and I am now desperately searching for a corroboration because unfortunately it is not helpful to have a single statement from two different persons… I sat down and read them and they are identical statements.”
Before this interjection by the coroner, Pilgrim extensively quizzed Walkes on the statement which he wrote two weeks after Maloney’s death and which was identical to that of his partner, Acting Sergeant Wingrove Headley.
Questioned by Pilgrim, the officer stated that he had not made any notes about the incident but agreed with the lawyer that as an experienced policeman it would have been prudent to do so.
He told the court: “That whole situation - the trauma - it was overwhelming mentally. I can’t forget anything, no details.”
But Pilgrim persisted: “I am suggesting that the reason for the statement being like this is that you both have something to hide.”
“That is not true,” Walkes replied.
Turning to Maloney’s fall 80 feet down from the cliff, Pilgrim asked the officer if he would be surprised to learn that Maloney did not suffer any broken bones.
Walkes explained that when Maloney fell there were waves on the rocks and perhaps these cushioned his fall.
Tags: Andrew Pilgrim, Constable Wendell Walkes, cushioned fall, Faith Marshall-Harris, no broken bones, overwhelming mentally, something to hide, statement, waves on the rocks, Wingrove Headley, word for word