The Tribune

By EARYEL BOWLEG

Tribune Staff Reporter

ebowleg@tribunemedia.net

POLICE Commissioner Clayton Fernander confirmed that new questions are being raised given the connection between a former person of interest in a murder case and a senior police officer, both allegedly involved in a cocaine trafficking scheme.

He revealed this last night while addressing a US federal indictment that alleges that drug traffickers smuggled tons of cocaine through The Bahamas into the United States since 2021 with the “support and protection of corrupt Bahamian government officials, including high-ranking members of the Royal Bahamas Police Force.”

Officer in charge of aviation Chief Superintendent Elvis Curtis was named in the indictment and was arrested in Florida last week along with Chief Petty Officer Darren Roker of the Defence Force.

Also named is Donald Ferguson, a man police previously questioned as a person of interest in the killing of Giovani Rolle. 

Mr Rolle, a former Jet Nassau employee, was shot multiple times after arriving at work on June 16. 

Commissioner Fernander said Ferguson’s “connection to this case, alongside Chief Superintendent Curtis, raises new questions that we are actively pursuing as part of our expanded investigation”.

Melanie Rolle-Hilton, one of Giovani’s four sisters, expressed concern to The Tribune that the investigation into her brother’s death might have been compromised.

The family questioned Curtis’s involvement in that investigation, given that he was the officer in charge of the Lynden Pindling International Airport

“What makes it even more disturbing now is these alleged allegations that took place at LPIA, the very same place where our brother was brutally murdered,” Mrs Rolle-Hilton said.

“And the senior officer is in charge of the airport of aviation. To think that the law enforcement officers being entrusted to conduct this investigation are also suspects of these criminal allegations in the indictment, I mean, it’s deeply troubling.”