Lester Hinds, Gleaner Writer
“This will stay with me for the rest of my life, to see my son like that. It is harsh! Just harsh. It is hard to digest.”
Those were the words of Raquel Barrett, the mother of 28-year-old Maurice Gordon, the unarmed Jamaican man who was gunned down by a New Jersey state trooper following a traffic stop along the Garden State Parkway near Bass River, in Burlington, on the morning of May 23.
READ: Diaspora demands answers about police shooting of unarmed Jamaican in New Jersey
Speaking with The Gleaner, Barrett said that she wants the state trooper fired and charged with murder.
“What I saw on the (dashcam) video, there was no reason for my son to have been shot, and that many times,” she said.
Gordon was reportedly shot at least five times.
“This is terrible! Terrible! I don’t know where to go from here,” she said.
Barrett said she learnt about her son’s killing about two weeks ago but because of COVID-19 restrictions, she was only able to fly to New York last Thursday.
“I break down every time I talk about it. The mental anguish is so much, I am in pain,” she told The Gleaner.
Like her son, Barrett is from Spanish Town, St Catherine, and migrated to Great Britain at 21, where she still resides.
Gordon was born in Spanish Town and attended Jonathan Grant High School.
He migrated to the United States at age 19.
At the time of his death, he was a chemistry major at Duchess Community College and lived in Poughkeepsie, upstate New York. He worked with Uber Eats.
The attorney representing the family, William O. Wagstaff, is calling for an independent investigation into Gordon’s death.
“You cannot have the state official investigating a state officer. In every other incident there is outside investigation,” said Wagstaff.
He further complained about a lack of information from the Attorney General’s Office that is handling the investigation.
The office has indicated that the case will be presented to a grand jury for adjudication, but Wagstaff said no date has been given, noting that grand juries have not been sitting due to coronavirus restrictions.
Wagstaff told The Gleaner that an independent autopsy will be performed on Gordon’s body, adding that funeral arrangements have begun.
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