LONDON, June 2: The Scotland Yard detectives, who were invited by the Jamaican police to investigate the mysterious death of the Pakistan cricket team’s coach Bob Woolmer during the World Cup, have informed
Mark Shields of the Jamaican police that Woolmer died of natural causes and not as a result of murder.
This is for the first time that officers of the Scotland Yard have opened up to indicate that nothing sinister was involved in the coach’s death except that Woolmer died of a heart failure brought on by ill-health and possibly diabetes.
The revelation comes after an extensive review of the evidences, photographs and toxicology report led by a senior Scotland Yard murder squad detective Superintendent Patrick Sweeney and by British Home Office pathologist Dr Nat Carey who, having seen the reports, had dismissed the strangulation theory a few days ago.
The Jamaican police are likely to announce the findings of Scotland officers in a press conference next week in Jamaica which indeed will leave them open to ridicule worldwide for the U-turn and jumping the gun to make speculative claims of strangulations casting thus a shadow over Pakistani cricketers and the World Cup.
However, Karl Angell, the Jamaica police Director of Communications, told The Gleaner he did not know of any planned news conference for next week.
Meanwhile, the BBC Sports Editor Mihir Bose said that Woolmer’s widow has heard nothing about her husband dying of natural causes.
Shields, a self-styled camera-loving Sherlock Homes-type figure and the second-in-command of the Jamaican police, in a press conference, had announced soon after Woolmer’s body was found and autopsy was performed that the 58-year-old coach had died of asphyxiation after being strangled without having a second opinion.
He also had said that he was ‘100 per cent certain that Woolmer had been murdered’.
Shields’s comments thus made people suspicious of conspiracy theories like ‘match-fixing mafia’ and ‘radical’ Muslims being involved. Also that he was poisoned by aconite, an ancient form of poison or was fed by snake venom and herbicide.
According to a front-page report in Daily Mail here on Saturday a source close to the inquiry said: “Mr Woolmer was not a well man. It is now accepted that he died of natural causes. With hindsight Mark Shields should have ensured a second post-mortem.
“Instead of saying the death was suspicious he rushed out statement saying it was a murder. He is going to be a laughing stock.”
One of Shields’s colleagues, according to the Daily Mail, said: “The knives are out for Shields. It’s enormously embarrassing ... there’s blood on the carpet in the Jamaican police.”
The role of Indian pathologist Dr Ere Seshaiah is already under scrutiny and according to the colleagues of Shields he should share the blame for the bundled inquiry after Woolmer’s death.
Woolmer was found dead in his room at the Pegasus Hotel in Kingston on March 18 the night after Pakistan’s shock defeat against Ireland in the World Cup. Woolmer’s body was eventually cremated on May 4 during a private family service in Cape Town, where he lived.
