Durban: The Jamaican police deputy commissioner Mark Shields has said Bob Woolmer had “no enemies” who could have harmed him but investigators were obliged to treat the death as a murder on the basis of pathology reports.

Shields, who was in Cape Town for a week interviewing Woolmer’s friends and family, said he was convinced that the 58-year-old former England player had no enemies who would want to kill him.

“I get the impression that Woolmer didn’t have enemies,” Shields said on the eve of his departure from Cape Town.

“Woolmer was a thoroughly professional and likeable individual, and I’ve not found anyone who would say a bad word about him or stab him in the back. It’s difficult establishing why anyone would want to harm a well-loved person like Woolmer,” he was quoted as saying by a South African website on Friday.

But, Shields said, the police were keeping an open mind and continuing to investigate the murder angle.

“I have been presented with facts from a pathologist which say manual strangulation and asphyxiation, therefore I’m obliged to conduct an investigation around that.”

“At the same time I am keeping an open mind. Nothing is written in stone until we get to the bottom of the investigation,” he added.

Shields refused to say who he had interviewed, but confirmed that he had met two of Woolmer’s closest friends — University of Cape Town sports scientist professor Tim Noakes and Wynberg Boys High School headmaster Keith Richardson. (PTI)