Juliet Bobb-Semple, the Office of the President employee who was accidentally shot by a policeman during a chase at Hadfield Street on March 27, remains bedridden, in pain and has not been offered compensation by the force.
Police were pursuing Dillon Hudson, who allegedly almost severed the hand of a minibus conductor on March 19, when Bobb-Semple, 54, was shot.
The police had said that they had gone to a Hadfield Street building in pursuit of the suspect and he had attacked one of them with a cutlass and escaped. The police had fired at Hudson and the bullet hit Bobb-Semple’s right ankle. The woman had been sitting at the side of her lower flat Lot 36 Hadfield Street apartment speaking to a neighbour.
She was rushed to the Georgetown Public Hospital (GPH) where she underwent surgery and has been discharged, but is restricted to her bed and in great pain.
When this newspaper visited Bobb-Semple’s home yesterday afternoon, her daughter Zelica said she was resting. According to the woman, police went to their home on April 1 to take a statement from her mother and they have heard nothing since.
“We have not approached them about compensation and they [the police] have said nothing about it,” Zelica said.
Efforts made to contact the relevant police authority about the issue of compensation were futile.
“It is their man that wounded my mother, she is the one suffering and therefore I think it is the police’s responsibility to approach us about compensation,” the injured woman’s daughter said. “We will not run after them.”
Bobb-Semple, Zelica explained, visits the GPH Clinic and the process of transporting her there is both hassling and painful. Since the incident, the woman has not been able to walk and doctors have given no indication whether she will be able to retain full use of her injured foot.
“Whenever she has to go to the clinic I have to call an ambulance and the attendants must come get her from the bed and place her on a stretcher,” Zelica explained. “It is a painful process for my mother.”
Zelica also reported that she learnt from “reliable sources” that Hudson, the suspect police were chasing, has turned himself in. However, Stabroek News was unable to confirm this.
Bobb-Semple’s neighbour had recounted that they were sitting talking when they noticed three policemen in a yard next door. Shortly after, a man jumped over the fence and there was a loud bang. The man then jumped over another fence nearby.
Blood was later seen gushing from Bobb-Semple’s ankle, and the police abandoned their pursuit of the man.
Devon Hudson, who was held in the house Hudson had been hiding in, had said that he and another man Dwayne De Groot were being pushed towards the gate by two policemen when he heard a commotion. When he turned around, he said, he saw Hudson, who is his brother, dashing towards the zinc fence.
He said Hudson jumped over the fence and immediately after a policeman who was pursuing him discharged the shot.
The man had contended that the policeman who fired the shot could clearly see Bobb-Semple and her neighbour talking.
No one at the scene had made any mention of the suspect being armed or attacking any of the policemen.