DETECTIVE Inspector Victor Mendez of the police photograph branch testified Friday that bullet indentations on a door inside the house at Braeton, St Catherine, where seven young men were shot dead in March 2001, indicated that bullets were fired from inside the house.

The inspector was giving testimony in the Kingston Home Circuit Court at the trial of six policemen charged with the murder of the seven men.

Mendez told the court that the negatives of photographs he took at the death scene at 1088 Seal Way, Braeton, were missing and the police were forced to use a commercial photo lab to make 60 copies from one of the original photographs to be presented to court as exhibit.

“I do not know where are the negatives of the photographs I took at the scene and from which I developed and printed photos that were used at the Coroner’s Inquest,” Mendez said in his evidence in chief.

He said he had a copy of the original photograph which he took to a private commercial photo studio, and witnessed the scanning and printing of 60 photographs which he tendered in evidence.

The photographs showed several different scenes of the interior and exterior of the house at Seal Way, Braeton, where the men were killed.

Photo number 17 showed bullet holes which appeared to come from inside the house through a window.

The policeman also said some of the photos showed several bullet holes on curtains, bedroom and kitchen walls and blood splattered on bedroom and living room walls.

He testified seeing water flowing on the bedroom floor covered with a red substance resembling blood mixed with water, and referred to photographs 28 to 30, which showed bullet holes in a door. But he said he saw no bloodstains in the driveway or on the pathway leading to the house

Mendez told the court that he was not sure if the crime scene was contaminated before he took photographs, but said that on his arrival the police cordon around the house was pulled. He testified that he did not see any civilians coming out of the house, although there were many civilians milling around and some beyond the cordon.

The six policemen – Sergeant Raymond Miller, Corporal Linroy Edwards, and constables Leighton Bucknor, Wayne Constantine, Miguel Ebanks, and Donald Bernard are on trial for the murder of Curtis Smith, 20, Andrew Virgo, 20; Tamoyo Wilson, 20; Lancebert Clark,19; Dayne Whyte, 19; Christopher Grant, 17; and Regan Beckford, 15.

The trial continues today.

-whytetk@jamaicaobserver.com