18 2GM Saturday June 11 2022 | the times
News
“It was a full moon. The stars were
gorgeous. We decided, let’s go down, sit
on the pier. We were sitting on the edge,
our legs kind of dangling, just talking,”
says Jasmine Hartin, 33, of her last
pier was filled with people. “They
brought me to a wall. They said they
found Henry, I asked if he was OK, and
that’s when I found out he was dead. It
didn’t seem real. They brought me to
the police station, they photographed
me, they didn’t take any alcohol level,
they didn’t test me. I’d only had, like,
two glasses of wine over a few hours.
“They had me shower and put me in
my cell.”
The gun was later found on a wall un-
derneath some mangrove trees.
Hartin says: “There was no question
at all that it was an accident, my lawyer
said they were going to charge me for
manslaughter by negligence. I would
have to pay a fine and it would go away.
I was honest with my caution state-
ment.”
But she says that her evidence state-News Death in the Caribbean
moments with the Belizean police
superintendent Henry Jemmott before
he was found dead in the sea and she
was discovered soaked in his blood on
the holiday island of Ambergris Caye.
When police arrived and retrieved
Jemmott’s body, they found one small
bullet hole behind his right ear.
Hartin subsequently admitted that
she had accidentally shot and killed the
42-year-old father of five while he was
showing her how to load his Glock 17
pistol.
The story has become all anybody
can discuss in the small country ofBelize since the incident happened on
May 28 last year. The details are
dissected on the television and radio
stations, and photographs of Hartin,
a diminutive blonde Canadian, domi-
nate the front pages.
Hartin’s former partner is the son of
Lord Ashcroft, the multimillionaire
former deputy chairman of the
Conservative Party, who has joint
British and Belizean citizenship and has
represented the Central American
nation at the United Nations.
Together, Hartin and Andrew Ash-
croft created Alaia, an exclusive bou-tique hotel in the San Pedro resort,
where the shooting occurred, and have
had two impeccably dressed young
twins, Charles and Elizabeth. They
were the country’s most glamorous
couple.
Hartin has been in and out of a
cramped jail cell over the past year after
being charged with manslaughter by
virtue of negligence. The offence car-
ries a maximum prison sentence of nine
months or a fine of about 10,000 Belize-
an dollars (US$5,000) but she is con-
cerned the authorities will change the
charges and fears for her life after re-
ceiving death threats.
“People perceive me as being... a
billionairess and this... entitled, spoilt
rich girl... this wild, crazy, party girl
that’s hanging from the rafters,” she
says. “I am a mother and a business-
woman, I am not a party girl, a drug
addict or any of this.”
The couple have since become
embroiled in a bitter custody dispute
over their twins, who are five years old.
Ashcroft says that his former partner is
an unfit mother because of her “immor-
al habits” and her involvement in the
accidental killing of the police officer.
Now Hartin says she wants to tell her
side of the story. She is hiding in a
friend’s house in the jungle when we
meet on Zoom, but she appears calm
and composed. She is immaculately
dressed, as though off to a tea party.
“I feel like I’m living in a movie and I
have to pinch myself to remember this
is my reality,” she says.
“It’s insane to me. I’m not someone
who likes to be on camera, but... if I stay
quiet, the smear campaign against me
will continue.”
I ask her if she can take us back to the
moment when she accidentally shot
Jemmott. “It’s hard to talk about that
night, the night my entire life changed,
and Henry’s as well. My life was put in
a blender.”
She says she and Ashcroft came
home to the resort at about 10.30pm
after a party, and Jemmott, their neigh-
bour, had asked them over for a drink
on his balcony.
Ashcroft stayed at home but, Hartin
says, “I grabbed a bottle of wine... we
took my little music player. Before we
walked to the pier he grabbed his gun
[from] the kitchen island. I said, ‘Why
do you need your gun?’ and he said he
brings it everywhere.”
Jemmott, she says, asked her to “get
familiar” with the gun. “He said he
thought I needed my licence to get a
weapon for protection. He handed me
the clip. I unloaded it and reloaded the
bullets.
“After I unloaded it a few times, he
took the bullets in his hands and he set
them down on the pier. I put the empty
weapon I thought was safe down beside
me.”
Jemmott then told her his shoulder
was hurting, she says. “He asked me to
rub his shoulder, it wasn’t anything
sexual, Henry was my friend. At some
point he said, ‘Let’s head back inside —
hand me the magazine so I can refill it
quickly’. I picked it up, I’m holding it,
and the next thing I know, it’s going off.
“He fell down on top of me, I can feel
blood, I am panicking, I am trying to
wriggle out from under him, he began
slipping into the water, so I tried to grab
him... under his arms and I couldn’t. He
was a very big guy, huge.”
In shock, she says, she grabbed her
mobile phone. “A man comes out of no-
where, I am trying to call the police, he
comes up to me, doesn’t say a word,
picks up the gun and walks away.
“I yelled at the security who were
coming down, ‘Stop this man, he is
taking evidence from the crime scene’
— at this point I don’t even know if
Henry is alive”. Suddenly, she says, theJasmine Hartin’s killing
of a Belize policeman
was an accident, but it
worked out for her ex,
she tells Alice Thomson
‘If I stay in jail, Ashcroft’s son gets