Local News

Marion Ali, Reports

The Police Department is mourning the loss of a second policeman in one week.    Corporal Victor Lima, the officer who was shot in the line of duty during a reported home invasion in Hattieville Village on Tuesday night, died at around three this morning at the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital.  Reports are that Lima and two other policemen under his command had just arrived at the house where they were summoned to intervene in the invasion when he was shot twice in the chest.  Chairman of Hattieville, Gilbert Domingo, accompanied reporters to the scene where the officer was gunned down.  He told us what transpired.

GILBERT DOMINGO, Chairman (Hattieville Village)

“He was responding to a report that was made according to an understanding that there was somebody in the house having some kind of problem in the house so that’s when the person they walk to the station and made a report and he had to walk over here because they don’t have a vehicle right now.  It’s been a couple weeks going on since the vehicle not working and they have to walk come over.  So even when he got shot he had to , according to the other police officers they had to get a ride to bring him down so he don’t stay and bleed to death.”

Domingo adds that Hattieville and the Police Department have lost an upstanding police officer.

GILBERT DOMINGO, Chairman (Hattieville Village)

“This officer was one of the ones that we would call, the one that really come and do his job and once he finish he head back to Benque where he lives but he is a senior officer so more than likely he control the movements of everybody so you know he is always on the job and doing what he does but we know him for being the senior officer and stuff so when this happen we were kind of surprise that he has to be the one to come out and actual face the music so we kind of sad about it because the whole village know him.  Most of the people who move around every day pass the station and stuff know the guy and even the ones that have interaction with him know the type of police he was, you could have trusted him to really do whatever police work he had to do allow him to do it.  So we didn’t have any problem with him at all so this is a loss for us.”  

Domingo appeals to the hierarchy within the Police Department to do what it can to ensure that the Hattieville Police Station and the officers who work there are equipped with the necessary vehicles and bullet proof vests in order to properly respond to the type of situations as the one in which Corporal Lima found himself.  

GILBERT DOMINGO, Chairman (Hattieville Village)

“One of the thing that we really the villagers here in Hattieville need to do is, the officials look into something appropriate and all the other eight villages that the police have to safe guard and patrol that we have something appropriate that we could cover these places more.  It’s very very unfortunate because we would expect that an officer would be prepared in the situation that he actually assisted in.  To be prepared as to be well secured with a vest and different things that they do, backup and different things like that.  So it’s surprising that it happened to him but we also would want it to be a wakeup call for the rest of the officers, the good officers – the vest at least would have protected him and we wouldn’t have been looking at it this way.”

Today, the Police flag at the Hattieville Police Station flew symbolically at half mast in honour of the fallen policeman.  He will be buried with full honours.  MA4LN.

The initial charges of Attempted Murder that were levied against the alleged gunman, Delford Slusher, will now be upgraded to Murder.  Slusher, it is reported, was apprehended inside the house during the incident.