Life changed dramatically for Ronald Newbold when a policeman shot him in the head without justification outside his home in 1996. While the shooting left Newbold's career prospects limited, Sgt. 1003 Kendal Strachan, the officer who shot him, has been promoted. In an exclusive interview with The Nassau Guardian, Newbold said, "What they did with him as far as discipline is they just promoted him. "In fact, when he shot me he was a sergeant. Now he's in charge of a division. So he's been promoted three times since then."
Newbold, now 46, was a 29-year-old houseman at the Nassau Beach Hotel when Strachan and his partner, PC 660 Carltony Forbes, followed him home and opened fire on February 24, 1996, court documents reveal. Forbes is no longer a policeman. Days later, the government expressed regret, described the shooting as an accident and promised to pay all his medical expenses. However, the government did not settle the matter until November 2001 when Supreme Court judge John Lyons awarded Newbold more than $500,000 in compensation.
Newbold said he did not receive a dime of that judgment until 2007. He said his lawyer deducted $150,000 from the settlement for his fees, which he said would be recovered during taxation. That still hasn't happened, Newbold said. "It's now 2013," he said. "In another three years, it'll be 20 years and I still haven't put this behind me yet. "No one seems to be worrying about whether I'll get it or not." Before the shooting, Newbold had picked up his aunt, Beryl Foulkes and his cousin, Paulette Brown, from the airport.
As they headed to Flamingo Gardens, they encountered a roadblock and police let them through, he recalled. Newbold said he heard gunshots as he turned through his corner, but assumed that the men who routinely gathered at a nearby bar were getting into mischief. Newbold said his cousin urged him to speed off when she realized they were the targets of the gunfire. He recalled, "I guess I'd already been hit, because she was saying, 'Go Ronald', but I couldn't do anything. The car just fetched.
Fortunately, it stopped between my house and my mother-in-law's house." He said, "I was just being a normal citizen just like any of you right now in this room. If you guys were driving a car that night, you could have been the victim just like me." Newbold said that if his grandmother had not taught him strong values, the incident might have caused him to become a criminal. He said, "There are a lot of guys [who are not] criminals that the police do things to cause them to turn the way they are.
"And if I wasn't a strong young man brought up by my grandmother in Andros, with a lot of discipline, I probably would've been right out there trying to take action for what they did to me. And from that day to now, not even the commissioner at that time, B. K. Bonamy Sr, none of them came to me and said to me 'we made a big mistake. We're going to get you some counseling to try to deal with it'." Newbold said he was "treated like a criminal" when he was taken to Princess Margaret Hospital, where he was placed on the Male Surgical Ward.
Newbold was transferred to the Intensive Care Unit on February 27 and doctors attempted surgery to remove the bullet that was lodged in his brain. However, surgeons encountered uncontained bleeding in the left scalp and right neck. The doctors packed the area and airlifted him to Jackson Memorial Hospital. In the civil suit, Dr. Phillip Villanueva said that although Newbold's life expectancy had not been affected, he could not return to work because his field of vision had been damaged.
Villanueva said even if Newbold returned to work, his prospects of advancement or finding employment would be greatly impaired. Newbold, who still has bullet fragments lodged in his head, could not work for 15 years after the shooting. His wife, a waitress, had to take care of the household and their five children, Newbold said he might have lost his home, had it not been for the generosity of Sheik Mahomed Harajchi. For the past two years, Newbold has worked as a tour bus driver. But he can't play basketball or go diving like he did before the shooting.
He also has problems with his speech. Newbold said, "People see my big scar in my head and ask me what happened. I hate to talk about it. "They cut off part of my head [and took] out the bullet. So it's a scar that I will always have with me and I'll always remember it because the scar [is] in my head." In addition to his emotional and physical scars, Newbold's faith in the police remains broken.
"I always say they can't put me on [a] jury," he said. "I cannot do it because I know what they tried to do to me and they tried to do to others." Last year, police fatally shot six people under disputed circumstances. Newbold is thankful that he survived to tell his story. He has never been arrested or charged in relation to any crime.
Click here to read more at The Nassau Guardian
