Woolmer inquest about to begin in Jamaica

Entertainment Cricket and Other Sports
1

The coroner’s inquest into Bob Woolmer’s death is set to start in Jamaica on Tuesday, five months after the Pakistan coach died in the hours following his team’s World Cup exit. The inquest aims to determine whether anyone is responsible for Woolmer’s death, which was initially the subject of a murder investigation.
The case sparked a media frenzy with police suggesting Woolmer was strangled in his Kingston hotel room on March 18. Detectives from Scotland Yard and Pakistan were brought in and Jamaican police said nearly 400 people had been interviewed.
However, after consulting independent pathologists and viewing the toxicology report, Jamaican police in June admitted Woolmer died of natural causes. The inquest is intended to clarify the situation once and for all and the coroner will issue the official cause of death following the inquest.
“There was a lot of speculation, and as a result of that speculation we are having the inquest,” Sergeant Dwayne Jex of the Jamaica Constabulary Force told AP. Jex estimated the process would take more than two months and at least 50 people were expected to testify.

Source: http://content-gulf.cricinfo.com/woolmer/content/story/315625.html

2

Re: Woolmer inquest about to begin in Jamaica

The British pathologist Nathaniel Cary was one of three witnesses who testified as the inquest into the death of Bob Woolmer began in Jamaica on Tuesday. On March 18, Woolmer was found unconscious in his room at the Pegasus Hotel after Pakistan were embarrassed the day before by Ireland in the World Cup.
In his opening statement at the Jamaican Conference Centre, the Kingston coroner Patrick Murphy said the inquest was to find out “when, how, and by what means Robert ‘Bob’ Woolmer came to his death”. Other witnesses who testified included Imogene Douglas, the waitress who served Woolmer three days prior to his death, and Bernice Robinson, the hotel maid who told the court she noticed a chair was overturned when she entered the room on the morning Woolmer was found.
Robinson said alarm bells went off inside her head when she first entered the room on the morning of March 18 because she noticed a chair was overturned. She told the court she saw blood on a pillow and then caught the smell of alcohol and vomit. It was after this she said she saw a man’s leg sticking out of a bathroom door and tried to open it without success so she called for help.
However, it was the testimony of Cary that took the longest and he spent approximately three hours answering questions from Ken Pantry, Jamaica’s director of public prosecution. He agreed there could have been a third party in Woolmer’s room leading up to the time he was found unconscious, but was quick to point out that the government pathologist, Ere Sheshiah, who conducted the first post-mortem, was in a better position to conclude how Woolmer died.
After Sheshiah’s post-mortem, two days after the death of Woolmer, the Jamaican police first reported it was inclusive, and then suspicious, before saying it was murder. As the investigation continued, the Jamaican police turned to Scotland Yard for help. The case took another twist when London’s Metropolitan Police reached the conclusion, after studying work of a visiting pathologist from Britain’s Home Office, that Woolmer was not murdered, but died of heart failure.
Quizzed by Pantry about the overall conclusion, Cary, who will return to the stand on Wednesday, said he could not conclusively state the cause of death. The inquest is set to determine the cause of Woolmer’s death and whether anyone bears any responsibility. More than 50 witnesses, including the chief investigating officer, the deputy superintendent of police Colin Pinnock, will testify.
Source: http://content-www.cricinfo.com/ci/content/current/story/315750.html

3

Re: Woolmer inquest about to begin in Jamaica

For them to now come back with a new murder theory would be kinda ridiculous, won't it? My guess is that they will likely rubber stamp the "natural causes", and be done with it. 50 witnesses to do that??? wow....

4

Re: Woolmer inquest about to begin in Jamaica

I miss Bob Woolmer.....

I just got the feeling he really wanted the Pakistan team to do well.

i get really depressed when i think about him.... may rab ul izzat bless his soul with peace and grant him janat al firdaus, ameen.

5

Re: Woolmer inquest about to begin in Jamaica

lao kar lao gal, DR Kurrakchand aka Sheshiah ko phir se khurrak shurou ho gaye. Iss ka ilaaj karo koi yaar warna yeh ab mujh se maar khaye ga :smiley:

http://content-uk.cricinfo.com/woolmer/content/current/story/317083.html](http://content-uk.cricinfo.com/woolmer/content/current/story/317083.html)

Third party involved in Woolmer’s death, says pathologist
Ere Sheshiah, the pathologist who conducted the autopsy of the Pakistan coach Bob Woolmer, has said that cell-phone pictures showed that a third party was behind Woolmer’s death. On the first day of his testimony to an inquest in Jamaica, Sheshiah had maintained that Woolmer had died because of poisoning and strangulation.

“After viewing the cellular phone pictures taken by Dr [Asher] Cooper [the first doctor to attend to Woolmer], I think definitely that there was a third party [involved],” Sheshiah said.

He criticised the three pathologists - Nathaniel Cary of England, Michael Pollanen of Canada and Lorna Martin of South Africa; who had pointed out flaws in his post-mortem procedure and testified that Woolmer died due to natural causes. Sheshiah said that the review procedure was “unusual and unacceptable”, Cary’s opinion was not final, and that Martin gave her findings without seeing the histology and toxicology reports.

Sheshiah also said that Woolmer was found with his head under the toilet bowl. “In my opinion, it is not possible for the disease to put him in such a position. This definitely speaks of a third party.”

The fact that other pathologists had disagreed with his conclusion that the hyoid bone in Woolmer’s neck was broken, was also addressed by Sheshiah, who stood by his findings despite admitting that an x-ray showed it might not have been broken.

Woolmer was found unconscious in his room at the Pegasus Hotel on March 18, a day after Pakistan’s shock defeat to Ireland in the World Cup. The police had initially backed Sheshaiah’s finding that Woolmer was murdered and released a statement in that effect, but after a review by Cary, Pollanen, and Martin, confirmed that Woolmer died “of natural causes.”’

The inquest, presided over by coroner Patrick Murphy and 11 jurors, is expected to end on November 9.

6

Re: Woolmer inquest about to begin in Jamaica

I don't understand how there can be such diametrically opposite views about facts. Presence of poison is easily established and is not a matter of opinion. One of these two sides is lying