Pakistan investigators join Woolmer murder hunt
Two detectives from Pakistan are helping investigate the mysterious murder of the country’s World Cup cricket coach after Jamaican police failed to make a breakthrough after more than three weeks, a security official has said.
The investigators arrived in the capital of Kingston to help solve the murder of Bob Woolmer, who was found strangled a day after his team was ousted from the tournament, said Gilbert Scott, permanent secretary in Jamaica’s Ministry of National Security.
“They will be here for as long as it takes,” Scott said. They came at the request of the Caribbean island’s government, he added.
The detectives join four Scotland Yard investigators and two forensic experts from Interpol, the France-based international police agency, who have been aiding in the probe for about two weeks.
Woolmer, 58, died on March 18, a day after his squad was upset by cricket minnows Ireland.
A Jamaican pathologist initially ruled the former England and Warwickshire batsman’s death “inconclusive,” but four days later announced Woolmer was strangled.
Mark Shields, Jamaica’s deputy police commissioner, has said the foreign investigators would help with DNA analysis and also examine theories that Woolmer, Pakistan’s coach since 2004, may have been poisoned before he was strangled.
Authorities are still awaiting toxicology reports.
Security video from the Kingston hotel where Woolmer died was sent to a laboratory in the UK for review, Assistant Police Commissioner Owen Ellington said Tuesday.
Woolmer’s death shocked the international cricket community and cast a shadow over the Cricket World Cup, being played in nine Caribbean countries.
Patrick Murphy, Kingston’s coroner, said he has not set a date for an inquest into Woolmer’s death.
