Barbara Gayle, Staff Reporter
GUNSHOTS WERE fired from both inside and outside the house in Braeton, St. Catherine, where seven young men were fatally shot four years ago, a civilian witness said yesterday.
The witness was testifying for the prosecution in the Home Circuit Court at the trial of the six policemen charged with the murder of the seven men. She was being cross-examined by attorney-at-law Lloyd McFarlane.
Under cross-examination by attorney-at-law Valerie-Neita Robertson, she said she did not hear shouts of "police, open up," on the morning of March 14, 2001. Neither did she see anyone being shot that morning.
She said representatives from' the human rights lobby group, Jamaicans for Justice, visited her and spoke with her, but that was after she gave her statement to the police.
\The witness said that following the shooting she did not see citizens in the community breaking into the house and breaking anything up.
Cross-examined by K. Churchill Neita, Q.C., she said she did not know how many persons were living at the house where the shooting took place. She said there were times when she saw two or three boys sitting on the fence at the back of the premises.
The Crown, represented by Senior Deputy Director of Public Prosecutions Paula Llewellyn, Deputy Director of Public Prosecutions David Fraser and Crown Counsel Tara Reid, is alleging that the policemen were not acting in lawful self-defence when the seven men were shot and killed.
HEARD THREE SHOTS
The witness said she heard three shots being fired from the vicinity of the Braeton main road on the night of March 13, 2001. She said she did not know the principal of Hartlands All Age School, St. Catherine who was shot and killed on the night of March 13, 2001.
The principal was shot and killed at a businessplace on Braeton main road on the night of March 13, 2001.
The trial continues today before Mr. Justice Donald McIntosh and the 12-member jury.
