The surviving wife and daughter of businessman Keith Clarke have made an application to sue the Government on the eve of a year following a not guilty verdict in the case of three Jamaica Defence Force (JDF) personnel accused of killing him in a deadly 2010 raid.

Filed by Clarke’s widow, Claudette, and his daughter, Brittani, the lawsuit challenges the official account of the May 27, 2010, incident, in which Clarke was shot 21 times – 15 bullets striking him in the back – inside his Kirkland Heights, St Andrew home.

The duo have filed a lawsuit alleging that security forces stormed the wrong house during the deadly pre-dawn raid.

According to court documents, the family is seeking damages for breaches of constitutional rights, negligence, and misfeasance in public office. They are also claiming J$18.9 million in special damages, including J$8.7 million to repair the damaged home and J$3 million to replace furnishings destroyed during the operation.

Government attorneys have already signalled their intention to fight the lawsuit. They argue that the operation was based on intelligence suggesting that fugitive drug kingpin Christopher ‘Dudus’ Coke was inside Clarke’s home at the time.

Harrington McDermott, legal counsel for the State, said in court filings that the security forces received intelligence from “credible sources” that the then fugitive was “at the premises and was in the company of a group of heavily armed men”.

He contended that during the operation, police and soldiers cordoned off Clarke’s residence and announced their presence, but were met with gunfire from inside the house.

McDermott said that during the subsequent exchange, soldiers entered the home and encountered Clarke on top of a closet with a firearm pointed at them. He said the soldiers opened fire in what they believed to be lawful self-defence.

Claudette and Brittani Clarke have strongly refuted this version of events. In their counter-claim, they assert that neither Coke nor any “gun-toting bandit was associated with them that night or at any time in the past”.

“At no time were the deceased and the claimants hosting the fugitive Christopher ‘Dudus’ Coke and or 7-8 heavily-armed men in their home on the early morning of May 27, 2010,” they stated.

The family argues that police and soldiers were “negligent” in failing to confirm they had the correct address before breaching the home’s front grille. They further contend that the intelligence relied on by the security forces was either flawed or known to be unreliable.

“The claimants assert and contend that in coming to their house to conduct the raid, those soldiers and police were misguided and/or negligent in how they gathered intelligence and information about who were the occupants inside the house and who were in fact inside the house at the time the raid commenced,” they argued.

Claudette Clarke described the moment police and soldiers descended on the property around 2:00 am, unleashing a “barrage of gunshots” even before entering. 

Claudette recounted the last words uttered by her husband amid the “frantic state of confusion, fear and horror” as members of the security forces engaged in “sustained gunfire” at the house.

In the chaos, she said her husband told her, “Claudette, I cannot allow criminals to come into the house and kill oonu off”, before retrieving his licensed firearm and returning the fire “in defence of his family”.

They said the family retreated to a bedroom, where Keith instructed his wife and daughter to hide in an adjoining bathroom. He attempted to conceal himself in a hidden compartment above the closet.

Claudette said that when security personnel eventually discovered her and her daughter, she identified herself and explained that she lived there with her husband. She claims one of the soldiers asked, “Weh him deh?” – to which she pointed to the closet.

According to Claudette, she then witnessed three soldiers open fire on her husband as he began to descend from the compartment with his back turned toward them.

Three soldiers were initially charged with Clarke’s murder, but the case collapsed in November 2024 when the trial judge directed the jury to return a verdict of not guilty. The judge agreed with defence attorneys that prosecutors had failed to produce sufficient evidence linking the soldiers to the killing.

The raid at Clarke’s home occurred just four days after Coke slipped out of Tivoli Gardens, his West Kingston stronghold, as the security forces moved in to arrest him on an extradition request from the United States.

The search for Coke triggered widespread security operations across the Corporate Area, with Clarke’s home being among those targeted.

Despite the Government’s insistence that the operation was based on credible intelligence, the Clarke family remains adamant that it was a tragic and avoidable error that cost an innocent man his life.