Corozal Town resident Rayford Anderson died in police custody on Thursday night after an apparent suicide in his cell. It's a death that's prompted an internal investigation into whether an adequate level of care and attention was used in the treatment of Anderson who had been arrested on a report of domestic abuse.
It's a death in custody - which is always an issue - but it's one that the head of national crimes investigation ACP Joseph Myvette says could hardly have been avoided - because he hung himself with a bed-sheet:
ACP Joseph Myvette
"Thursday night based on a report received police located and detained Rayford Anderson where he was brought into custody based on a domestic report and as a result whilst on lockdown sometime during the course of the night sometime after 10 pm he was found hanging from a cell where he was alone. An internal investigation has been launched into that matter at this point in time which is still ongoing."
Cherisse Halsall:
"Sir in this particular case what does it say for police due care and attention that Mr. Anderson was allowed to presumably take his own life in custody?"
ACP Joseph Myvette
"What happens is that based on a man's human dignity you cannot take away everything from him and allow him to go in a cell nude, so, he would have had to have had some piece of clothing so there are things that can be prevented and others that cannot be prevented, what was put in place was that all prisoners are revisited and checked on, on a thirty-minute interval or an hourly interval to check on their condition and that done at each and every police station across the country. So it is an unfortunate incident which is under investigation."
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