Lead Stories

Rasbert Turner, Gleaner Writer

Police personnel are trying to come to grips with the drowning of a colleague who fell into the river and disappeared while chasing gunmen yesterday.

Corporal Vincent Bent, of the Mobile Reserve, along with a special corporal, fell into the Rio Cobre near Gordon Pen in St Catherine.

According to the Police High Command, the two policemen were part of an operations team when in the course of chasing gunmen along the western bank of the Rio Cobre, the ground crumbled.

A major search involving police personnel, members of the Jamaica Defence Force and civilians was launched and the policeman's body was found last night.

Even while the search for the policeman was under way, a number of Bent's colleagues were teary-eyed and had resigned themselves to the belief that he had died.

"I did not know that he would be the victim of the Rio Cobre. Right now, it mash mi up badly. Right now, I don't know how I am going to cope," a sergeant said while looking in the river.

Other persons stared blankly at the scene where Bent disappeared, while others recounted what they claimed to have witnessed.

"The whole problem started when di police searched a house and dem get two guns. After dem hol' di yute dem and tek dem inside, one a dem run," a male bystander told The Gleaner.

Police investigators have taken into custody a man they claim was among those who engaged them.

rasbert.turner@gleanerjm.com