CONSULTANT forensic pathologist at the Ministry of National Security, Dr Ere Sheshaiah testified Wednesday at the inquest into the police killing of seven youth at the Braeton last March, that Danish pathologist Dr Peter Leth did not indicate that he was not satisfied with how his postmortem examination was conducted.

Leth observed the postmortem examination on behalf of Amnesty International.

But Sheshaiah, under cross examination on Wednesday by attorney Carolyn Reid, who is representing the police said at least one of Leth’s findings was contradictory.

In his report on the postmortem examinations, Leth had concluded that the investigation of the seven deceased was in many ways insufficient.

“The bodies were taken away from the scene of the crime before their position in the house were registered and photographed. As they all had received obviously lethal shots, there was no need to hurry them to the hospital for treatment and they could have been left at the scene to be viewed,” Leth reported.

But Sheshaiah said he gave Leth a circular to guide him on how to conduct himself during the postmortem.

At no time during the postmortem on March 29, 2001 did Leth touch any of the seven deceased, he testified. “Sometimes he stood behind me or about two feet from me and at other times he moved around during the postmortem,” Sheshaiah testified.

In an apparent attempt to ascertain if the youth could have been shot at close range, attorney Richard Rowe, representing the estate of Tamayo Wilson, one of the Braeton victims, had asked Sheshaiah last Friday if a pillow placed between the person shot and the firearm would have collected gunpowder residue.

However, Sheshaiah said it would have but he was not provided with a pillow(s) from the crime scene.

Reid questioned Sheshaiah at length on Wednesday about the use of pillows in the killings and argued that Leth had made no mention of being briefed by Amnesty or read any clippings which advanced this possibility.

Sheshaiah said that he had read the entire report and saw no reference made to pillows. He added that he would expect Leth, as a professional, to have included all the background information provided to him, in the report.

Meanwhile, Sheshaiah agreed with Reid that gunpowder tattooing Leth said he observed on the injuries of two of the deceased would contradict Rowe’s submission that a pillow placed between the person shot and the firearm would have absorbed the gunpowder residue.

“If the pillow absorbs the gunpowder residue then there would be no tattooing,” Sheshaiah said.

The pathologist also agreed with Reid that two injuries on Andre Virgo, which Leth described in his report as contact wounds, did not meet the characteristics of a contact gunshot wound.

Sheshaiah who testified that at the postmortem there was no difference of opinion between him and Leth on Virgo’s wounds, denied that they discussed the deceased’ injuries. He said that the Danish pathologist’s assertion that in discussion with him about the contact wound on Virgo, he (Sheshaiah) had said it could have been a muzzle flame but he was not quite sure, was not true.

The forensic pathologist also denied that the articles of clothing removed from the deceased were dumped in the garbage.

“In my presence the morgue attendant put each set of clothing in a plastic bag, labelled it and handed it over to the police,” he said. He said that he gave instructions for the clothes to be sent to the laboratory.

In Leth’s report it was stated that “the clothings were put in a big plastic container probably to be thrown away”.