Minister of Home Affairs Clement Rohee says the police are awaiting the results of samples sent to the US for testing in relation to the murder of Sheema Mangar.
“We have sent some pieces of evidence for DNA testing to be done overseas,” the minister said when he was asked about the matter at a press conference on Friday.
He said it is hoped that the results would be sent to the police in the not too distant future. According to Rohee, the police were forced to send the samples to the US and not to a Caribbean country–as has been done in the past–because “the pace with which those results have been coming has been woefully inadequate.
“We recently took the decision that we should take a shift in the laboratory facilities’ location because the time waiting has actually been painstaking.”
The minister gave as an example the DNA samples that were taken by forensic officers of the Jamaican Police Force from the burnt remains of the men who died at Lindo Creek. The samples were taken over two years ago and no results have been returned.
“It is not that we have not been following up, but they have their own testing to do. The fact is that we have not heard anything,” the minister said.Only last week, in a letter to the newspapers, Mangar’s parents had bemoaned the fact that the police have made no “meaningful progress”, stating that they are anxiously awaiting the results of DNA tests on a piece of fabric found underneath a suspect’s car.
The parents, Radica Takoor and Lalbachan Mangar, said they were “keeping their fingers crossed,” but that the inaction of the police in the case had eroded their hope and given rise to doubts that justice would be served. Now, they said they feared the case might be destined for “the cold case cabinet” and were appealing to the authorities to avoid such an outcome.
Mangar, 20, was run over and dragged under the car of the robber who stole her mobile phone on the evening of September 15, 2010.
The bank employee, who had chased after the robber, was dragged from the Bedford Methodist Church at Camp Street and North Road to the intersection of Camp and Church streets. She died early the next morning at the St Joseph Mercy Hospital from the many injuries she sustained.
A week after her death, police had detained a man and his car. The man was subsequently released but the police said they found pieces of fabric beneath the car possibly matching Mangar’s work uniform. The fabric was subsequently sent overseas for testing.
