The Police negotiator who talked murderer Jermaine Pearman out of committing suicide has detailed his standoff with the knife-wielding killer.Anthony Mouchette, who’s known Pearman since childhood, helped apprehend him after he stabbed his estranged girlfriend Shakeya DeRoza to death and threatened to kill himself.“What was going through my mind was ‘I’m not going to let him sit there and die on my watch’,” explained Acting Superintendent Mouchette.“I will do everything in my power to either get him to give himself up or not carry out his intent.”Pearman fled the scene of the killing in Paynter Lane, Sandys, around 3pm on July 10 2009 and went into hiding on the Railway Trail near Somerset Bridge.He called a friend and told him he’d killed Ms DeRoza and was going to kill himself.A police sniffer dog found him hiding in foliage under a pillar, covered in blood and holding a knife.A/Supt Mouchette, who has been a crisis negotiator since 1998, began to speak with Pearman around 5.10pm.“He had a knife in his right hand, it looked like a fish knife, he had it the whole time I was negotiating with him,” he told The Royal Gazette.“Initially he appeared to be conscious but he was lying down slumped, so my approach was very cautious, I was approaching from a distance of maybe ten feet. You break the barrier.“I knew who he was, he knew who I was. I’m a football referee, I knew him from the football field and I know him personally. We grew up sort of together in the same neighbourhood so it came straight to the chase; I said ‘hey Jermaine, it’s Mouchette’.”For the next 50 minutes, A/Supt Mouchette talked to Pearman, who has a young child with Ms DeRoza and a teenager from a previous relationship.“Slowly I was asking him questions and he was answering them; it was not my intention to go straight in and intervene.“As a negotiator you try to break through any frustration. “That’s why when he said he’d killed her and was going to kill himself I knew he had two children and was a footballer,” explained the officer.“I told him ‘it’s not worth taking your life right now, you can watch your children grow up and play football with them’. He just appeared very adamant that he wanted to take his own life. My job was to persuade him not to.“At one point he asked if she [Ms DeRoza] was dead. I told him she was injured but not dead, I didn’t want to tell him of the death, it might get him to carry out his threat. I took that seriously.“At one stage I moved my foot and he thought I was coming to get him. He said ‘don’t come any closer, I will kill myself’ and put the knife to his sternum [breast bone].“As the negotiations went on he was getting weaker and weaker. He had no shirt on and there was blood dripping down his neck, his shoulder, his chest.”Pearman asked to speak to his friend Raymond [Ray-Ray] Burgess. A/ Supt Mouchette briefed Mr Burgess not to reveal that Ms DeRoza was dead, and to try to persuade Pearman to go to hospital.According to a statement Mr Burgess gave police, he watched as his friend inflicted a three to four inch wound on his own neck.According to A/Supt Mouchette: “He was saying ‘let me be, I want to die.’ He was getting weaker and weaker. I left him for a few seconds to speak to the technician and advise that I felt an intervention was needed soon. As I was discussing that, he fell unconscious and Mr Burgess said ‘go get him now, he’s dropped the knife’.”Mr Mouchette and two other Police officers picked Pearman up and carried him to an ambulance. He was treated in the intensive care unit for a self-inflicted wound to his neck plus cuts to his chest and abdomen.He was charged with murder five days later and pleaded guilty last week. Puisne Judge Carlisle Greaves jailed him for life yesterday.A/Supt Mouchette once won a bravery award after helping catch a young woman by her clothes as she attempted suicide by jumping off a ledge above East Broadway in October 2006.He said of the Pearman standoff: “This is equal to that. With Mr Pearman, in my opinion he had already inflicted some injuries to himself. It showed he had the intention to carry it out but I was mentally prepared to be there for him as long as it would take.”