Workers at Roman's Funeral Home in Kingston, place the remains of former Pakistan cricket coach Bob Woolmer, into a hearse in April, before being flown to London and then on to Cape Town, South Africa, to be buried by his family. - Norman Grindley/Deputy Chief Photographer

Editor's Note: Below are reactions from readers following the recent announcement by the Jamaican police that Bob Woolmer, Pakistan's cricket coach, died of natural causes, and not murder in March this year. He was found lying on the floor of his hotel room.

tTHE EDITOR, Sir:

I read the headline in your Wednesday edition in which the Commissioner of Police, Lucius Thomas, was quoted as saying, "We were hasty", in reference to the police's decision to declare Bob Woolmer's death a murder when they did.

If your quote was an accurate one, it would be shocking, simply because the commissioner had just left a press conference where he himself had said, in as many words, that the investigation was a proper one, scoffing at suggestions that errors had been made or that anything about the investigation was "embarrassing". Shocking also because he sounds as if he is an outsider commenting on the investigation and not the one ultimately responsible for it as the JCF head.

If it is in fact so that Mr. Thomas stated that the police had been "hasty" in starting a murder investigation, one wonders why he did not say so minutes earlier when addressing the press conference, and why he is apparently speaking out of both sides of his mouth.

What are your justifications

Thequestion I would like to ask the commissioner is this: Had a murder investigation not begun immediately after the police were given a report of manual strangulation, how could they have justified the immediate questioning of the players, taken fingerprints, DNA samples and statements, interviewed guests, etc. - which needed to have been done, especially when considering that the potential 'suspects' were not going to remain in the hotel for weeks while police awaited toxicology reports to confirm or disprove murder? Had the second, third and fourth reports supported the murder theory, how could the police have now launched a murder investigation at a time when most of the suspects and witnesses would have been scattered all across the globe?

Does Mr. Thomas, seeing all the subsequent 'press leaks', really believe that the report of a Government pathologist stating that Woolmer died of "manual strangulation" could have been suppressed from the world media camped out at the Pegasus while additional reports were being obtained? Had this too 'leaked'? Does he not see that charges of a cover-up would rightly have been made?

Hindsight will always be 20/20 vision. In the circumstances and given the report that they were given, the police would have been both arrogant and careless had they done anything but launch a murder investigation when they did.

If Shields and his team were so certain it was murder, they would not have asked for other opinions as to the cause of death. And they clearly set about uncovering the truth, which they have done, if the findings of the three eminent pathologists are to be believed.

keeping quiet

Could Thomas's comments have been an attempt to undermine Shields, who, it is widely rumoured he does not like, due to salary and other non-work-related issues? While I suspect this to be so, I still would like to give him the benefit of the doubt and to feel that he was simply misquoted by your reporter, as I could not fathom how he could say such a thing, contradicting what he had said minutes earlier during the press conference. I would ask Commissioner Thomas for clarification, but know better than to expect a response, as total silence is becoming the hallmark of his stewardship, and it is probably his warped concept of being a good and strong leader.

Either that, or it is simply a case of his feeling it is better to stay silent and let people think he is out of his depth than to open his mouth and prove it!

I am, etc.,

MIKE SMALL

8 1/2 Merrivale, Ave.

Kingston 8