Socialite Jasmine Hartin called her fatal shooting of a police official in Belize a “terrible accident” in a new interview — insisting she is not a “billionairess” party girl-turned-murderer.
Hartin, 32, spoke to CBS News for a “48 Hours” special to try to dispel naysayers who still insist she deliberately shot dead superintendent Henry Jemmott in May — including the dead officer’s own family.
“I am not a murderer. That’s ridiculous,” insisted Hartin, who has been charged with manslaughter.
“Henry was my friend. That was an accident — a terrible accident. It will haunt me for the rest of my life,” she insisted in a teaser for the episode that will air at 10 p.m. Saturday and also be streamed on Paramount+.
In her first full TV interview about the shocking shooting, Hartin also complained about people focusing on her privileged background as the daughter-in-law of British billionaire Lord Michael Ashcroft.
“People perceive me as being a billionairess, and this entitled, spoiled rich girl,” Hartin complained to CBS’ Peter Van Sant as she took him to the scene of the shooting in the Central American country.
“This wild, crazy, party girl that’s hanging from the rafters … That’s not it at all,” she insisted.
“I’m a businesswoman. I’m a mother. I’m a friend … I’m a wife,” said Hartin, who lost interim custody of her two children to husband Andrew Ashcroft, 43, after the attack.
Hartin took the CBS crew to where Jemmott died, admitting they had been drinking and walked to a pier because “the moon was beautiful.”
There, he told her how he “always” carried his Glock 17 pistol, and then tried to show her how to load and unload the magazine because he wanted her to have a gun for personal protection.
“He says, ‘Can you hand me the magazine from the gun,’” Hartin recalled. “So, I lean over. I pick up the gun. … I’m trying to get the magazine out.
“Next thing I know, the gun went off,” she said.
She insisted that she still does not know if “it was an accident or the gun misfired.”
“But consciously did I pull the trigger? No,” she insisted in the special, “Jasmine Hartin’s Shot in the Dark.”
Her cop friend then “fell on top of me, and all I could feel was warmth. And I later then realized he was bleeding on me,” she said of Jemmott, whose body was later found in the water after seemingly sliding in as the socialite shook him off of her.
“I didn’t know if he was dead … there’s not a night that goes by [that] I don’t dream about that incident and relive it,” she said in the teaser, looking up but with dry eyes.
“My freedom is at stake. My relationship with my children is at stake,” she complained of the ongoing legal drama as she awaits trial for manslaughter.
Many of Jemmott’s loved ones are still not buying the socialite’s story, however.
“My brother was shot behind the ear — execution style,” one sister, fellow police officer Cherry Jemmott, told CBS.
“Jasmine Hartin should be charged with murder, not manslaughter.
“She gives so many stories, so who knows when she’s telling the truth,” the suspicious sister said.
