A police officer remains under close arrest at the Springlands Station, following the shooting of Terry Wayne Jack, 22, of Orealla, Corentyne River during a drinking spree on Monday morning at the Orealla Police Outpost.
Reports are that a post-mortem examination is expected to be performed on Jack’s remains today. He sustained a single gunshot wound to his chest.
Police had said that the constable allegedly shot Jack at about 12:35 am. This newspaper learnt that an SLR rifle was reportedly used in the shooting.
Panicking, the constable ran to Jack’s home to inform his mother, Vilma Schadde that he had been shot. He then took her to the station, where she saw her son’s body lying face down in the kitchen in the upper flat with a gunshot wound in the region of his heart.
She also told this newspaper she learnt that he had been sitting on the kitchen floor drinking while the officer was reportedly standing over him with the gun.
He said too that it appeared as though Jack, the eldest of four siblings tried to “push away the gun because his fingers [on the left hand] had black gun powder.”
The woman said the four were “having a party at the station and they were sporting with two girls.” She learnt that the officer reportedly got jealous because her son was becoming too friendly with the females.
She said her son “continued to make jokes and he [officer] threatened to shoot him. Like he didn’t expect him to do it and by the time me son said ‘shoot me na,’ he pulled the trigger.”
The girls questioned the officer as to why he did that and started to scream and got scared and ran away.
Schadde related that “after an hour he came to my house and rapped on the door and tell me ‘mommy your son shoot himself.’ I asked him ‘where,’ if he was dead and he said, ‘yes.’”
At the station, he kept “walking up and down and hollering and crying. He tell me that my son put him in problem and that he would have to go to jail.”
She said too that “he asked me what would happen to his mother and his fiancé and I asked him if he didn’t know that before.”
The woman asked him to see the gun and he brought it out from the cupboard and she could not believe that Jack could have used “that heavy weapon…”
An uncle, who did not want his name to be mentioned, told Stabroek News that he was asleep when someone went to inform him that his nephew had been shot.
He rushed to the station, where he met the police constable and “he told me that Terry shot himself and I asked him how come.”
The officer related that he was in the front room changing his clothes when he heard a noise as if someone was knocking on the back door. When he checked, he saw Jack with the weapon but before he could reach him he had shot himself.
The constable also told the uncle that he then “checked the cupboard where the weapon was secured in and discovered that Terry broke the lock with a baton and removed it.”
The uncle said too that he noticed the black powder on Jack’s fingers but he too did not believe the constable’s story and felt “it looked like foul play.”
The officer also told him that he “got confused” and put back the weapon in the cupboard.
Meanwhile, he told this newspaper that a resident who was guarding the village’s emergency boat and engine heard the loud explosion.
He then heard one of the females shouting “gosh man [name of officer], look what you did to him.” By the time guard rushed over to the station, the girls had already fled.
Earlier, he had heard the group laughing and having a good time.
Ranks from the Springlands Station arrived later that morning and questioned the females.
They also took the constable into custody while Jack’s remains were taken to the Skeldon Hospital mortuary.
