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Youth Says Police Set Him up to Get Wet Up
posted (February 26, 2014)

On Monday night's news, we told you about 21 year old Andrew Augustine.  He is the young man that was shot on Sunday night in the Lake Independence area. 

Augustine was picked up by police just after 10 that night when he was found with a stick of marijuana. But instead of him being taken to the police station to get charged for possession of the drug, he was instead taken and release in the PIV neighbourhood – one of the biggest gang territories in Lake Independence. Now Augustine lives behind the complex area which is known to be the turf of another gang, one that just happens to be rivals with the PIV gang.   And even though the young man claims to have no affiliation with any gang, he told us he became an easy target due to a set of malicious police officers. Augustine was shot in the neck but despite all odds, he is alive to tell his story which he shared with Monica Bodden today:

Andrew Augustine - Shooting Victim
"They went straight down Mahogany Street, and when they thought about letting me off is when they took a curve up Flamboyant and hit all the way to the back in the heart of PIV going to the river side. When they reached there, they told me to jump out and go home. I felt so good that I wasn't going to get a charge, and I started to walk home. I didn't jump out and run because I'm in a danger zone because I don't really have anything to fear around the neighborhood because I don't really have anything with anybody. So, I just walked normal, and right after they dropped me off, about a minute and a half, after they let me go and sped off, a young man pulled up on me. He put a gun to my head, but I saw it in the shadow that someone was moving behind me. The same time, I spun around and knocked his shoulder while the gun rested on the back of my head. The gun slid down by my neck and went off. My ears started ringing. My head jerked to the side, and I saw the young man riding off with the gun in his hand. That's when I knew I got shot. I didn't run anywhere because if I did, I would have ended up back into the heart of PIV. If I ran toward him, he might have changed his mind to continue to shoot me. So,I stayed right there, and when I saw him disappear out of my sight, I checked my neck and saw where I got shot. I held my head. I found where I was losing blood, so I just rested my hand on it to try to slow it. I didn't run because maybe people wouldn't come out to help me, or maybe my adrenaline would be up, causing me to lose more blood or maybe cardiac arrest I would go into. I stayed right there and noticed that I was breathing well, and I tried to flag a car down to assist me. About 15 minutes after, somebody from around the neighborhood came out, and he took me in his vehicle to the hospital."

Monica Bodden
"Do you believe that you were set up by police to get shot?"

Andrew Augustine
"Yes, ma'am, because the police picked me up from Electric Avenue. That's an area where you'd consider 'Bak-a-Lands'. PIV and Bak-a-Lands have a feud right now, and as police they know that. It's always on the news that that side and this side are warring between each other as rival."

Monica Bodden
"Have you made a complaint to the police department about this incident?"

Andrew Augustine
"Only in the statement that the police asked me to give, I told them about the police dropping me off, but I didn't have enough confidence to complain to the police about the police because I usually see things like this on the news before, and it's something that just shows on the news, maybe for people's entertainment, and by tomorrow, it's forgotten because when people would watch the news and see guys like me, they would say, 'Maybe that guy deserves it, or if he died, it would be better for the streets because of all this crime.' People will just forget about it right away like how they will see this interview and forget it. So, I didn't think about complaining to the police because you don't complain to police about police. Bad news about police will make it bad for all of them. All their privileges could be taken away, and people wouldn't trust them, so they wouldn't want to spread the news out there, or want me to complain to them about the next. I know they wouldn't do anything about it."

As we reported in last night's newscast, 23 year-old Stephan Anderson was arraigned yesterday on charges of attempted murder, use of deadly means of harm, and dangerous harm before the Chief Magistrate yesterday. He has been remanded to prison until April 14.

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