AfriKa CRY BLOOD

by Maria Bradshaw

I’AKOBI MALONEY was not killed by police, neither did he commit suicide. His death was ruled a misadventure.

SERGEANT WINGROVE HEADLEY (right) being escorted into the officer of the Coroner's Court by uniformed officers yesterday.

Coroner Faith Marshall-Harris handed down this decision yesterday six months after the start of the inquiry into the death of the 23-year-old Exhibition winner whom police said jumped off a 50-ft cliff at Landlock, St Lucy, last June 17, as he was about to be escorted to the Holetown Police Station.

The coroner found there was no evidence to substantiate that Maloney had been unlawfully killed by the police or that he committed suicide.

She surmised that Maloney, a Rastafarian, may have felt some form of harassment when the police requested that he accompany them to the station and so “he panicked and made a sudden dash for freedom”.

But while the coroner cited the mutual distrust between the Rastafarian community and the police and called for improved relations between the two, the verdict was not accepted by the many Rastafarian brethren who turned out yesterday.

They gathered in the courtyard surrounding Maloney’s grieving mother, Marguerita, and let it be known that there would be no peace between them and the police.

Marshall-Harris spent close to two hours reviewing the case and analysing the evidence. (more…)

by Barbados Advocate

WHEN a forensic pathologist performed a post mortem on the body of 23-year-old engineer I’Akobi Tacuma Maloney, among other things, his lungs were inflated.

That was te evidence of Dr. Carl Winskog of the Government Forensic Sciences Centre at the Coroner’s Inquest into the death of Maloney, formerly of Reed Street, City.

The forensic pathologist said that on June 20, 2008 when he performed the post mortem, he also found blunt trauma to the head, multiple lacerations to the head, arms and legs, and a laceration to the liver. He attributed the cause of death to drowning. (more…)