...Victim: I did nothing to provoke attack
By
Nikita Braxton-Benjamin
nikita.braxton@trinidadexpress.com
Story Created:
Sep 5, 2012 at 10:52 PM ECT
Story Updated:
Sep 5, 2012 at 10:52 PM ECT
Terrence Augustine, the man recorded on video being slapped across the face and arrested by a police officer, said yesterday he had done nothing to provoke the incident.
Augustine, 40, said he had been left traumatised and in pain from the injury to the left eye suffered when he was hit. Augustine said he had gone to the grocery last Friday and was walking home when he saw a man he knew being pulled by the police officers.
Augustine said it was then that he was struck. The video of Augustine being slapped has gone viral on social networking sites and caused public furore.
It has triggered investigations by the Police Complaints Authority and the Professional Standards Bureau of the Police Service.
The Express was told yesterday that the officer who struck Augustine had taken sick leave from his policing job.
Augustine was interviewed by officers of the Professional Standards Bureau last evening at the San Fernando office of his attorney Cedric Neptune.
He declined to he photographed, telling the Express: "I have been trying to stay indoors. Just close friends checking me. I have not been out there dealing with the public."
Augustine, a building contractor, said had been unable to work since Monday because "I seeing cloudy in one eye".
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