Seerattan was drunk

Exactly one year after his death, it was yesterday revealed that only two of the nine gunshot wounds found on the body of Phillip Seerattan were found to be the results of the potential shots responsible for the teenager’s death. This was the conclusion drawn by Dr Hughvon Des Vignes, the pathologist who performed the post-mortem on Seerattan’s body. Des Vignes was giving evidence at the Port-of-Spain Magistrates’ Eighth Court, where the inquest into the death of Seerattan is being heard by Chief Magistrate Sherman Mc Nicolls.  Mc Nicolls is functioning in the capacity of Coroner. Seerattan was fatally shot by police on November 20, 2002, at the International School, Westmoorings, after he shot a security guard on the school’s compound.

The pathologist, attached to the Trinidad and Tobago Forensic Science Centre, identified the wound at the back of Seerattan’s head as one of the potentially fatal ones. He said that in that wound “a distorted missile was found over the surface of the brain toward the back of the head.  He said it could have been sustained when the person who fired the shot was standing “slightly to the back and off to the right” of the deceased. He described it as an “entry wound” sustained from an “entry shot going across the back of the head.” He added that the wound was a “distance wound,” the result of a shot fired from anywhere between one and 100 yards away. Potentially fatal wound number two, he said, was one found in the abdomen. No bullet was found there, however, because it had exited the side of the chest.

He said the teen would have been considered intoxicated based on the results of his urine sample. The results revealed that Seerattan’s alcohol level was 220mg per 100 litres. In this state, he said, the teen would not have been standing “rigidly upright” but could have been “stumbling and turning” if the other shots had preceded the two potentially fatal shots. According to Des Vignes, apart from the “jacketed bullet” found over Seerattan’s brain, three others were found lodged in different parts of his body.  One beneath the skin at the front of his neck, one over the inner surface of the left arm, and one over the area of the left hip joint. There were about four abrasions not related to gunshot wounds and two related to entrance gunshot wounds, he said. During her cross-examination of the witness, attorney seeking the interest of the Seerattan family, Patricia Roberts, made a request to use diagrams that Des Vignes had in his possession, to which Martin George, the attorney representing the subjects of the inquest, PC Gary Moore and WPC Suad Weekes, objected.

George told the magistrate that he (Mc Nicolls) and the other attorneys did not have copies of the diagrams and requested that copies be made available before Roberts could continue with her line of questioning. He added that the diagrams had not been tendered into evidence. Mc Nicolls, however, allowed Roberts to continue with the use of the diagrams and assured George that copies will be made available to him, the other attorneys and the police prosecutor, Acting Insp Kenneth Cordner. Stemming from Des Vignes’ report that Seerattan was “reportedly shot in an exchange of gunfire with the police,” Roberts asked the pathologist if he had ever seen someone shot in the back of the head in a “frontal attack.”  George immediately jumped to his feet with an objection. “The witness is not a gunfighter,” he said. “The question is not relevant and she is inviting the doctor to create a scenario as to what occurred at the school,” he added. Mc Nicolls overruled the objection. PC Vaugn Joseph of the Four Roads CID also gave evidence. Hearing will resume on November 27.