An 18-year-old mental patient died in Dangriga Police custody this morning, and now a post mortem will have to tell if the police are to blame. 18-year-old Frederick Martinez was detained on Sunday after he allegedly punched a taxi driver in the face. Police couldn't find a psychiatric nurse at the Southern Regional Hospital and so they took him into custody.
Because of his violent public behavior in public, the police felt that he was a threat to the community. He was supposed to have seen the psychiatric nurse on Tuesday but that never worked out. So he remained in custody for over 48 hours without being charged and this morning at 5:30, 60 hours after he was originally detained, police found him dead in the cell. They had last seen him alive an hour earlier.
Police are saying that he was not brutalized and invited the family to inspect the body in the cell. So what caused the death? Well a post mortem scheduled for tomorrow morning at the Southern Regional Hospital should offer some answers.
For context we note that in march of this year, a Police Constable, Ever Morales was killed in Dangriga by Giovanni Tasher, a mental patient who his family says was "possessed."
