Barbara Gayle, Staff Reporter
A FORENSIC scientist from New Scotland Yard has submitted a report whose findings differed from those of Government ballistics expert Daniel Wray.
This was in relation to tests conducted on firearms in connection to the Kraal case.
Yesterday Wray testified in the Home Circuit Court that the fragments of bullets recovered from the bodies of three of the four civilians at Kraal, Clarendon, came from an M-16 rifle. The rifle was handed to Wray by a policeman from the Bureau of Special Investigation. The M-16 rifle is an exhibit in court.
During cross-examination yesterday, defence lawyer Valerie Neita-Robertson showed Wray a section of a report from Mark Mastaglio of the Metropolitan Police Forensic Service at Scotland Yard.
RESULT INCONCLUSIVE
After reading the report, he was asked if Mastaglio believed his result was "inconclusive as it was not possible to determine which of the six guns from which the test fired bullets were derived had discharged the fragments", and Wray said he saw that in the report.
It was suggested to Wray that the fragments were in such a condition that his result would be inconclusive in relation to the M-16 rifle and he said that was not his opinion.
Wray said he examined a .45 pistol and M-16 rifle and came to the conclusion that they could not have been fired during the shooting incident at Kraal on May 7, 2003.
Evidence was given in court that these weapons were assigned to Senior Superintendent Reneto Adams.
Wray said he carried out tests on the 9mm Taurus semi-automatic pistol found at the crime scene at Kraal could have been fired on May 7, 2003.
Robin Keely, a senior forensic scientist from the United Kingdom, said he conducted tests on the clothes of the four deceased and found firearm discharge residue on them. He concluded that some of the victims must have been shot within close range and that was within a distance of two or three metres.
The Crown is alleging at the trial of SSP Adams and five other policemen that they were not acting in self-defence when the four civilians were fatally shot at Kraal.
