After "vigilante" beating, man dies.

Ashdale Mc Hutchinson

JENSEN LA VENDE

ALL HOPE that Ashdale Mc Hutchinson would survive his attack last Wednesday night came to an end at 6 pm yesterday when he was pronounced dead.

His family plans to donate his kidneys for organ transplant because they say he was “a giving man.”

Before his death, McHutchinson was declared brain dead. He had swelling of the brain and had been taken off a respirator for monitoring.

The mild-mannered 49-year-old Lopinot resident was beaten in what police reported was vigilante justice. Any crime he committed has not yet been determined.

Initially, it was said he tried to take a young child from Oropune Gardens. That changed to: “He tried to lure her away.” Then the story evolved into his calling a child he did not know “cousin.”

What is definite was the beating that left him bleeding from the mouth, and head and with bloodshot eyes. Residents wanted to drag him across asphalt after he was pulled out of some bush that they set on fire to flush him out. He had to run into the bush, in an area he was unfamiliar with, in an attempt to escape the beating.

Residents told Newsday not only was he beaten, but whatever valuables he had were taken from him, as well as most of his clothes, so that he was left in his T-shirts and boxers. Some say he was dressed like that at the children's play park and that was why he was beaten.

That version of the events also changed between Wednesday and Saturday.

MC Hutchinson went to visit his relatives in Oropune Gardens the day he was beaten. He drank White Oak rum chased it Coke. By 7 pm he had drunk enough to be intoxicated and his cousin-in-law Ann Roberts found it was time for him to go home.

But McHutchinson wanted a cigarette and was given directions to a shop. But it had none, so he went to another, some distance from where his relatives live.

They did not see him until the next day at hospital, where he was in the ICU, as a “John Doe.” By then the country had seen videos of him on the ground incoherently responding to questions from the residents, who have apologised to Roberts and her husband Mario for what they did.

Fingers began pointing as to who hit him, but none of the heroes turned villains have stepped forward.

His relatives want justice. They deny he was the type to be a child molester. Their claim seems to be supported by the fact that police have not said he was, and by residents’ retraction of their original claim.

Today, relatives hope to be told the cause of his death after an autopsy at the Forensic Science Centre.