7 News Belize

I Went To Jail With Jasmine
posted (June 2, 2021)
But while Jemmott's family prays for his soul, not everyone is shedding a tear. Among them is one man who found himself incarcerated on a curfew violation last Thursday night - hours before Jasmine Hartin was brought in.

Whether by accident or design that's how that man, known to us only as Jose ended up asleep in the next cell over from the one destined to house Jasmine Hartin.

And yesterday he spoke off-camera to Cherisse Halsall in San Pedro Town about what he saw.

It was pandemonium on San Pedro yesterday afternoon when 32-year-old Jasmine Hartin finally emerged from her island jail cell.

And while clothing and Covid measures allowed her to keep her identity quite concealed there was no mistaking the petit socialite who just a week ago appeared to be the Queen of the Alaia.

But all that was before, and as everyone knows by now the wee hours of Friday morning found the socialite sitting in a jail cell. What isn't common knowledge, however, is the man who was sitting one cell over. He's asked to be called only by his first name, Jose. But yesterday sat down exclusively with channel 7 to give us the inside scoop on Hartin's time in the San Pedro cell block.

Voice of: Jose, Hartin's Cell Neighbor
"I was sleeping and the noise, so when I got up I saw them bring her in and they were speaking to her about the ballistics and that they're going to take her fingerprint and everything but her clothes were full of blood so I told her somebody beat you or something and she said no they brought me for murder. So I asked her did you do it? And she said no, someone shot her friend and he dropped on top of her and that's why her blood, her clothes have blood. So I said ok then, and she wanted water and she wanted to smoke a cigarette but the cops didn't want to give her any cigarette so she started to cuss them out and she said she wants her medication.01:18

"To be real with you what I saw in the morning, in the night that they brought her, really they were roughing her up because it was a cop that died. So to be real with you, what I saw it wasn't nice."

"So the cops took her inside and I don't know if they gave her her medication or what but five minutes after they took her to the bathroom and a female police officer took off her clothes and put it in a bag, and they gave her some clothes. She went to the bathroom bathe, change off, and she came out and they locked her beside me and that's when we started talking."

"I noticed that she was really **!@#^** up. So I can't say if she was doing drugs or what but she was really, she was lost that night."

Cherisse Halsall:
"Now when this woman enters a jail cell with you in Belize do you know who she is?"

Jose, Hartin's Cell Neighbor
"I didn't know who she was until in the morning I got to know who was really that lady. She told me that they own a hotel and her husband is the father for, how the guy name again who owns the BTL."

Cherisse Halsall:
"Ashcroft."

Jose, Hartin's Cell Neighbor
"Ashcroft and I said wow that's you and she said yeah that's me and really I was, I was, in my heart, I wasn't pissed off with her. I was so happy that I applauded her, yeah you are the first lady that killed a cop."

"A lot of people don't like him here in San Pedro, why because to be real with you he abuse me already, physically and mentally."

And while Hartin's friends in the Cellblock were in her corner, that's not true of the rest of the country particularly the police who've lost one of their own and seem bent on pushing for justice, if at least this once.

Jose's story is consistent with initial reports that the first version of Hartin's story involved a mystery shooter in a passing boat which, at the time, she claimed had shot her friend Supt. Henry Jemmott. She later backed off from that story.

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