[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he incident now under investigation occurred on Monday, October 29, 2018. Sergeant Leozandre De Leon left his family at home for the Criminal Investigation Department in Castries. He is the department’s administration officer. He arrived at CID shortly before 8 pm to find just one officer at the station. It turned out to be a quiet night, so he decided to kill some time at the cinema, where he joined two friends, also cops. Together they watched an action movie. They had some KFC afterward, then De Leon returned to CID around 11.30. The duty officer still was on his own, taking down a statement from three individuals—two women and a man—concerning what sounded like a case of piracy on the high seas.
The department phone rang while the officer was still engaged with the trio. De Leon answered it. An unidentified person reported having heard gunshots coming from Beverly Hills, in Bocage; several shots. De Leon asked the duty officer about his other men and was told they were out on a report. De Leon called one of them and informed him about the reported shooting. The officer told De Leon he and his team were at Chef Harry Drive, at the Morne. He said they had heard gunshots but could not establish where they came from. De Leon instructed them to go to
Beverly Hills and investigate. Then, it suddenly hit De Leon: his own home is on Chef Harry Drive. He called his wife; several times. There was no response. Eventually he drove to his house. On arrival he wondered why certain individuals known to him were in his driveway.
I will not go further into who did what, or when, at this point. Suffice it to say that De Leon slept the rest of the night at CID. The next day, he made an official statement and at the suggestion of a fellow officer and friend he voluntarily handed over his gun, for which he has a license. It’s his private firearm.
He left CID around 4 pm. Sergeant Leon was never told he was a person of special interest or a suspect; he was never arrested or accused of any crime; never asked to hand over travel documents. Evidently the police saw no cause to detain him.
From what I’ve been able further to establish, De Leon has never been disciplined, or taken to the orderly room. No one has ever accused him of bad behavior, and most definitely not his wife. Contrary to repeated news broadcasts, there is no evidence that she ever complained to the police that her husband abused her in any way.
The shocking statements by deputy police commissioner Dorian O’Brian at an early morning press conference on the day of the incident were made, I’m reliably assured, without first checking with the crime department. Much of what he told reporters seems to have been gleaned from the first Romeo & Juliet radio report of the homicide early Monday morning.
Contrary to widely disseminated reports, De Leon was never “sent home on leave.” A letter signed by the deputy police commissioner O’Brian, states that last Wednesday De Leon applied for 90 days’ vacation leave. His request was granted via correspondence dated 6 November 2018, and bearing O’Brian’s signature. Until her death on Monday 29 October, Kimberly William-De Leon and Sergeant Leozandrae De Leon were husband and wife, the parents of two children age 9 and 4.
In the meantime, De Leon resides at the home he once shared with his wife, now a crime scene. His kids were controversially taken away from him, a situation he and his lawyers intend soon to correct.
