By RASHAD ROLLE

Tribune Staff Reporter

rrolle@tribunemedia.net

WHAT began as a routine ticketing exercise for a broken headlight turned into a nightmare for two women in Exuma who claim they were brutalised on Sunday by one of the most senior officers on the island.

Images of blood streaming from the gashed eyelid of one them, Dejah Laing, 19, were shared hundreds of times on social media over the weekend, attracting the ire of horrified users. The women and their families are now demanding that the officer responsible be fired.

Ms Laing, mother of an 18-month-old baby, was travelling home from the Rolleville Homecoming Festival & Regatta around 4.30 on Sunday morning along with her two cousins, Aaliyah Bain, 20, and Samuel Humes, 26, when their day took a turn for the worst.

Mr Humes, the driver, said he was about to be ticketed when he told the senior officer his two cousins were in the car.

“He rushed to the car like he had a demon,” he told The Tribune yesterday from inside a relative’s house off Carmichael Road. “He shouted for them to come out the car and the girls didn’t come out the car. He started putting his hand through the window to open the door. He eventually got the car door open and when he did he slapped Dejah in her chest and yucked her out the car. The reaction from him yucking her is that she accidentally fling her hand and miss and hit him in his face or whatever. He then put her in a headlock and just started punching her in her face.”

Ms Laing did not readily comply with the officer’s demands, she admitted. She cited his aggression and discourteous demeanor as justification. Ms Laing, who is about 5”2, said the “6”2” officer punched her five times in the face, the first knocking her to the ground. She struggles, she said, to come to terms with the fact that a man, particularly a police officer, would punch her so hard and so repeatedly.

Her friend, Aaliyah Bain, said she attracted the officer’s rage after willingly accompanying her arrested friend to the police station.

She said: “I went with her in the police car because I didn’t want her there with three male officers and while I was in the car I was speaking freely, saying ‘y’all wrong, ya’ll wrong, how y’all could do this to a female who way smaller than y’all. That’s when the guy who was driving literally turn back and punch me in my mouth three times, directly in my face. My face was bruised, my lip has a cut under it and my teeth is cracked in the back.”

The women said they were initially taken to a police station cell, then to the clinic and then back to the station where they were interviewed, processed and allowed to leave without charge.

The trio were recently hired at Sandals Resort in Exuma and they fear the incident has disrupted their lives so much that they could lose their jobs.

“We ain even supposed to be taking days off right now,” Ms Laing said. “We don’t even know if we will have a job when we get back to Exuma.”

Sinte Roker, 19, visited them at the clinic and took the photos of Ms Laing’s bruised face which were circulated on Facebook. One of the things she remembers most from the incident are the laughs of two of the officers present.

“When they were in the clinic sitting down they were there laughing and getting off so nonchalantly, two of the same set that were involved in all this,” she said. “It was like they were in their own little land, like nothing happened or as if my cousin eye didn’t just get beat in.”

Police Commissioner Anthony Ferguson told The Tribune yesterday that the matter is under active investigation. “A team flew into Exuma yesterday evening to conduct investigation into the circumstances,” he said.

RBPF officials, however, rarely reveal investigation findings surrounding matters involving police conduct to the public, despite persistent questions from the press.