After the police chief she shot dead in the tropical paradise of Belize slumped on top of her, the former daughter-in-law of billionaire Lord Ashcroft described trying to ‘wiggle out from under him.’
‘There was a huge bang,’ Jasmine Hartin, 33, testified, and then ‘Henry fell back on top of me… I could see blood and felt blood.’
Superintendent Henry Jemmott was killed by the Canadian-born socialite after his gun accidentally went off while she was handling it when they were having a late-night drink together on a pier in May of last year.
‘I tried to wiggle out from beneath him,’ Hartin, who is accused with homicide by negligence, claimed.
‘And then he started slipping into the water, and I tried to catch him, but he was much bigger than me, so I couldn’t hold him up.’
Hartin claimed Jemmott’s death was “still very tough to talk about” since it was a “terrible night that affected everyone’s life and ended some” in a TalkTV interview with Piers Morgan planned to air later today.
Hartin also claimed she is ‘certainly not a murderer,’ that she ‘doesn’t recall touching the weapon’s trigger,’ and that the gun could have gone off because it was ‘rusty.’
‘I don’t recall ever touching the weapon’s trigger, but I was holding it when it went off,’ she added.
‘I’m not sure if the weapon was defective or not.’ I honestly have no idea how that went off.’
She claimed that the Belizean police chief had previously shown her his Glock 17 pistol and advised her to purchase a gun for self-defense because he ‘believed she required protection.’
He urged her to ‘practice unloading and reloading’ the firearm and to ‘become familiar with it,’ she alleged.
‘I believed it was empty,’ Hartin said. The only time I handled the weapon was when Henry asked me to deliver it to him at the very end.’
Supt Jemmott had asked her and her partner Andrew, 44, the son of the former Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party, out for a drink, according to the mother-of-two.
Andrew decided for an early night in their apartment in San Pedro, Belize’s tourist island of Ambergris Caye, so she went alone to meet him.
‘Andrew was supposed to come with us and join us for a beverage that night,’ she explained. He opted to remain in and not join us at the last minute. So we weren’t supposed to be alone.’
Supt Jemmott had asked Hartin to rub his shoulder before the incident because it was sore from his day of fishing, she claimed.
She categorically refuted rumors that she and Supt Jemmott were having an affair, insisting that their relationship was one of friendship.
Before the rifle went off, Hartin claims he was’sitting a foot or two away, to her left.’
‘I’m thought to be this wild cocaine junkie party girl,’ she added, addressing other wild rumors circulating around Belize. ‘It’s simply not true.’
During the conversation, Piers also talked about an old footage of Hartin shooting a watermelon on a beach.
‘I’ve never possessed a gun in my life,’ she continued. I’ve never had a gun before. I’ve fired them a few times, but I’m not an expert on the subject.
‘What that video doesn’t show you is the ten times I tried and failed to hit the watermelon, and that footage was taken by my ex.’
Hartin, a former dental assistant, was reared by a single mother in rural Canada before moving to Belize in 2014 when a long-term relationship ended, and she settled on Ambergris Caye, a popular tourist destination.
She worked as an estate agent in San Pedro, the island’s principal town, where she met Andrew Ashcroft, whose father owned the Belize Bank.
Hartin had previously stated that she was ready to return to Canada, but she was seduced by Andrew’s wit and decided to make Belize her home.
The pair welcomed twins in 2017, but they never married, despite referring to each other as husband and wife in public.
She is now estranged from Andrew, and she and he are fighting over custody of their twins. He claims she is unsuited to be a mother.