A policeman testified yesterday that even as he searched one of the victims of the Crawle killings and had found nothing that could bring harm to him or his colleagues, the man was shot dead.

Constable Donovan Thompson, an intelligence officer in the Special Anti-Crime Task Force (SACTF), did not name the victim or say who had fired the shot. But the clear implication was the fatal bullet came from the gun or guns of members of Senior Superintendent Reneto Adams’ Crime Management Unit, who had gone to the small Clarendon village in May 2003 to arrest a wanted man, Bashington Douglas.

In another development at the trial yesterday, 11 year-old Shanice Stoddart confirmed to defence lawyers that she was intercepted by two Scotland Yard detectives during a bathroom break when she first gave testimony a week ago and that one of them had whispered something to her.

It did not come out in court what was said, but defence attorney Debra Martin, in coaxing the information out, said that Shanice did not want to speak to the police officers and that one of them had given her a bit of paper to write her answer to whatever it was that had been asked.

“The judge said I should not speak to anyone,” Shanice apparently wrote.

During her testimony last week Shanice, nine at the time, related how she was in the death house and had hidden under a bed with Angella Thompson, one of the victims, when the police came. She said she was taken out into the yard by a policeman who had choked Thompson so that she would let go the child.

Yesterday, Constable Thompson, who several times wiped tears as he gave his evidence, testified that on the day of the incident he was among several policemen who had gone to Crawle in a blue and white Toyota Hiace bus driven by his immediate supervisor, Sergeant Que Facey.

According to Thompson, the group first reached to Crawle, but the wanted man, Douglas, whom informants had identified as ‘Shortman’, was not there.

They had gone to the nearest town to Crawle for lunch when at about 5:00 pm Adams received a call on his mobile phone. Thompson heard Adams’ side of the conversation in which the senior policeman asked three questions:

“Is he there?”

“What is he wearing?”

“Are you sure?”

With that, the group headed back to Crawle.

At the house, the five policemen, who Thompson pointed out as sitting in the docks, emerged from the vehicle armed with M16 rifles. Thompson claimed that he and Facey, the driver, remained in the vehicle. He heard sporadic shooting.

When the shooting died down and he thought it was safe, Thompson said, he left the vehicle and went in the direction of the house and into the yard.

He was standing under a mango tree, Thompson said, when Adams brought him an apparently panicked child. Adams went back inside the house. Thompson claimed that he heard gunshots.

Thompson said he told the child – apparently Shanice – to run to her home and “do not stop”.

It was after this that Thompson said he went to the house and where the man he was searching was shot.

As he entered the house, in a room directly in front of him, Thompson said he saw the figure of a woman, lying partially on a bed, with “blood spattered in the chest region, and a male figure lying on the floor”.

He testified that he went to another room to his right.

There was another room to his left. While he did not see anyone at first, Thompson said, he “felt a figure peering on me through an open door”.

“It was a man, and I went around, held him in his waist and I took him out,” he said.

He said the man was between five feet, 11 inches and six feet tall and would have weighed about 200 pounds.

“My impression was that he was as scared as I was,” Thompson told prosecuting attorneys.

Thompson began searching the man who was made to raise his arms, bent at the elbows, with palms upwards. He said he held the man on the right side of his waist, placing his own right leg between the man’s legs. He patted the man on his left side then the right and the front pockets, which were searched.

“I found nothing that was detrimental to myself or my colleagues,” Thompson said.

“I heard explosions, then I felt the man’s body slump and hit me on my right side,” Thompson said. “. My immediate reaction was to dive to the room from which I took the man, which would be to my left, and I shouted ‘clear’,” he testified.

He said he did not want the police to think that anyone other than police was in the room.

He left the room, related the incident to his supervisor and went inside the bus to regain his composure, said Thompson, who claimed he did not draw or fire the 9mm pistol with which he was armed.

Under cross examination from Valarie Neita Robertson, one of Adams’ lawyers, Thompson admitted that he was under investigation for driving a Mazda 323 motor car with stolen licence plates. The plates belonging to a Portmore man.

He also admitted being under investigation for a shooting at Beckford and Orange streets in downtown Kingston and was being investigated by Superintendent Cornwall ‘Bigga’ Ford for driving a stolen vehicle.

He denied knowing if SSP Donald Pusey had interceded on his behalf. He also denied that, as part of giving false testimony, the shooting case would be dropped.

Asked if he was living abroad, he said ‘no’, but said ‘yes’, when Chief Justice Lensley Wolfe asked if he was staying abroad.

Thompson also admitted inconsistencies in his early statements and the evidence he gave but rejected being seen in the company of members of Spanish Town’s notorious One Order gang and that Adams had spoken to him about being in the company of “undesirables”.