RENETO Adams was adamant at the coroners inquest yesterday that the seven youths who were killed by the police at Braeton on March 14, 2001 died in a shoot-out.

“It was the worst shoot-out I have seen for a very long time,” Adams said in response to suggestions from attorney Dennis Daley that his description of the shoot-out was “pure fiction” and that there had been no shoot-out.

Adams ,who heads the Crime Management Unit, said that it was not true that his team entered the house at 1088 Fifth Seal Way without any resistance.

“I’m suggesting that the seven men were shot while they were pleading for their lives and asking for Corpie to come and save them,” said Daley, who represents the estate of Reagon Beckford, one of the deceased.

“That is absolutely not correct,” Adams replied.

And under cross-examination by attorney Richard Rowe, representing the estate of Tamayo Wilson, another of the victims, Adams admitted that he had not himself seen or perused warrants of search or arrest, when he headed the operation at Braeton on March 14 last year. Adams said that he was acting on the basis of what he had been told by Deputy Superintendent Cornelius Walker.

Adams said that up to the present time he still did not know whether the police party had been in possession of one or two warrants when they went to 1088 Fifth Seal Way. Not having seen the warrants or having them in hand, he nonetheless was acting properly when he called out the occupants of the 1088 Fifth Seal Way premises, he said.

“As commanding officer I could have been in possession of constructive warrants,” Adams told the jury.

In his evidence in chief Adams testified that 10 policemen, including himself and Inspector Carol McKenzie entered the premises at 1088 Fifth Seal Way the early morning of March 14. After the policemen were strategically placed, Adams said, he went to a white metal window and announced that he and other police personnel were there “to execute warrants of search and arrest on persons in this premises”. It was then that firing started from inside the house.

Adams, in response to Rowe, said that it did not surprise him that in giving evidence on January 16, this year, DSP Walker had testified that he did not go to 1088 Fifth Seal Way, and never moved from the vehicles he was there to guard. Adams said that he would not say that DSP Walker was lying but that he may have been mistaken.

In his earlier evidence in chief Adams told the jury that when the police contingent of more than 55 policemen arrived at Braeton and parked in the car park, Walker, with fewer than six policemen, plus a civilian, went to 1088 Fifth Seal Way.

It was as a result of a conversation he had with Walker in the car park, on Walker’s return, that he gave certain instructions to Inspector McKenzie that led to their trek to the house. There were no lights on the premises. Neither were there street lights nearby.

Rowe asked Adams why he had thought it important, in his written Bureau of Special Investigations statement, to describe certain tasks Walker performed at Lot 51 Cassava Piece and at Cumberland, but had omitted from the statement, Walker’s mission to 1088 Fifth Seal Way, shortly before the shooting.

“It was not necessary,” Adams said.

Adams testified in the evidence in chief that at 3:45 am the contingent of policemen left the Duhaney Park Police Station and went to Cassava Piece, St Andrew. DSP Walker and a small team of policemen entered Lot 51 Cassava Piece, and returned with a man who he showed Adams. The contingent next stopped at Cumberland where DSP Walker and a small team again entered a premises and returned with a civilian whom he took to Adams.

“Walker came to me with a man from the Cumberland premises and told me something. As a result, I briefed the personnel and we got in our service vehicles and drove to a location in Braeton,” Adams testified.