BROADCAST journalist at CVM Television, Michael Pryce, Thursday told the coroner’s inquest into the killings of seven youth by the police in Braeton last March that from the time he arrived on the scene at 4:56 am until he left at about 9:30 am, he heard no voices shouting “Our Father” or “Help”.

Pryce said that the only activity he saw was senior police officers going in and out of 1088 Fifth Seal Way, where the youth were killed, and the removal of the seven bodies from the house to three police jeeps which had reversed down to the house between 6:10 and 6:30 am.

At the morning session, police photographer Victor Mendez presented 13 pictures which he said he took on the morning of the killings but that were not among the 72 negatives and photo enhancements previously admitted into evidence.

Pryce’s testimony during the afternoon session was marked by spirited exchanges between opposing attorneys during his cross-examination and a verbal joust between Carrington Mahoney, deputy director of public prosecutions, and Hugh Thompson, representing the estate of Christopher Grant, one of the deceased youth.

Thompson and Maloney clashed after Thompson, who was cross-examining Pryce, submitted:

“You arrived at 4:56 and at approximately 6:10 you saw or heard nothing that excited you?”

Mahoney: He said 6:30.

Thompson: You’re quibbling.

Maloney: Your honour, we are lawyers, not fish vendors. I hope we would be accurate.

Laughter.

Under cross-examination by Thompson, Pryce admitted that he admired the work of Senior Superintendent Reneto Adams, who heads the controversial Crime Management Unit, and that he was his friend. Pryce also said that he formed the impression that “some sort of gun play took place that morning”.

Thompson: You said Adams told you some men took on the police and lost their lives?

Pryce: Yes.

Thompson: As an experienced journalist, did you ask him how he knew they were dead?

Pryce: I asked him that and he referred me to Superintendent Daley.

Thompson: Why didn’t it occur to you to mention this when you were testifying earlier (during the evidence in chief). I take it he told you why. Do you know them to be doctors?

Pryce: I know them to be policemen.

Thompson: You spoke with people other than your friend Adams?

Pryce: Yes. I spoke to major players.

Thompson: I take it that the major players pronounced them dead?

Pryce: They didn’t. They were pronounced dead at the morgue, the police don’t have that power.

Asked by Thompson what the 45-60 policemen he said he saw at Braeton that morning were doing between the time he arrived and left, Pryce said that while most of them were in the car park, some kept curious citizens from getting too close to the scene and others carried the bodies to the jeeps.

Pryce, who told Thompson that he had seen Adams on several occasions since then, said they had not spoken about Braeton.

Thompson: You avoid it?

Pryce: We speak about other things. Being friends does not mean mixing business with pleasure.

Pryce also said that some persons were discussing the incident at Braeton on the radio as if it was “a modern day version of Nazism”.

Thompson: Who is the Nazi?

Pryce: Various commentators who practise opinion rather than journalism and give the impression that they would rather rush to judgement than await the full facts which even I don’t have myself.

Pryce testified that when he and cameraman Milton Reid arrived at Fifth Seal Way they saw a number of policemen and a few police vehicles. He said he saw Senior Superintendent Adams, Superintendent Cornelius Walker and Superintendent Harry Daley in an open lot. There was also a barefooted young man with his hands tied behind his back.

Pryce also said he saw only one civilian, a young woman dressed in a green nurse’s uniform, walking away from the open lot and Fifth Seal Way.

Pryce said that he and the cameraman were told by Adams and Daley that some young men had lost their lives in a shoot-out, after they had taken on the police. He said that he conducted interviews that morning with Adams, Daley and the chairman of the Police Federation.

Pryce testified that it was so dark when he got to Fifth Seal Way that Reid had to turn on the night light on the camera. They were not permitted by the police to go beyond the gate of 1088 Fifth Seal Way.

“We walked to and from the house to the parking lot several times trying to make sense of what had happened from some of the policemen,” he told the inquest.

He also testified that just before or shortly after 6:00 am, while standing in front of 1088 Fifth Seal Way, Superintendent Daley came out of the yard with three or four pistols or revolver-type weapons on a stick.

“He said he was trying to get it verified but that he believed the weapons were used in a recent killing of a constable at the Above Rocks station and that his firearm was taken,” Pryce testified.

Pryce said that shortly before 7:00 am he and Reid were joined by two Hot 102 reporters, one of whom, Dwayne Hill, has been covering the inquest and was in court Thursday. Just after 8:00 am, the police allowed them to enter 1088 Fifth Seal Way and he entered the house from the back entrance. He said that after leaving Fifth Seal Way he and Reid visited the shop at Old Braeton where the principal of Hartlands Primary School, Keith Morris, was shot and killed.

The police had said two of the youth were guilty of Morris’ murder.

Pryce said he and Reid also visited the Hartlands Primary School.

On Wednesday, coroner Lorna Errar-Gayle told Mendez to print and bring the 13 additional prints to the inquest Thursday, after Dennis Daley, appearing for the estate of Reagon Beckford, one of the deceased, submitted that crucial evidence could possibly be among the 13 negatives not printed.

After the attorneys examined the 13 pictures, which were mostly duplicates of 72 prints in a booklet shown to the jury on Monday, they were admitted into evidence.