A United Kingdom forensic pathologist said the four people killed by the police at Crawle, Clarendon, on May 7, 2003 were shot dead in a “controlled way” and that their wounds did not support the police account of a shoot-out.

“In my opinion, the injuries sustained (by the four deceased) were not the typical injuries one would expect to find during a so-called shoot-out,” said Jack Craine, professor of forensic medicine at Queens University in Belfast, who took the witness stand yesterday in the murder trial of Senior Superintendent Reneto Adams and five members of his disbanded Crime Management Unit.

“They (bullet wounds) are, in my opinion, more consistent with having been shot in a controlled way. There is the possibility that two victims were shot whilst lying on the ground or floor,” said Craine, who is also the state pathologist for Northern Ireland.

He told the court that Angella Richards and Kirk Gordon, two of the Crawle victims, might have been shot while on the floor or ground. Richards, he said, was shot on the left side of the chest, going to her right shoulder, while Gordon was wounded on the chin.

He said that it would not be uncommon for victims to be shot during a gun battle, where people were firing in both directions, but that the wounds would randomly be dispersed over the victims’ bodies or the bodies would be struck by bullet fragments.

Craine testified that he did not attend the autopsies nor see the bodies of the four Crawle victims, but was provided with body maps of the deceased and saw reports and diagrams provided by independent pathologist Derrick Pounder, professor of forensic medicine at Dundee, Scotland. His findings, he said, were significant as all the dead persons sustained two chest wounds and none were injured from bullet fragments.

But under cross-examination from defence attorney Earl Witter, Craine said there was no way anyone can predict the relative position of the ‘actors’ (policemen) and explained that conclusions can be drawn that would give the relative position of the victim and shooter.

He said that according to the body map, bullets entered the bodies from different directions, and he reiterated under cross-examination that the victims may have been shot while lying on the ground.

Craine replied in the negative when defence attorney Valerie Neita-Robertson asked whether he had been through the exchange of shooting in Jamaica between police and gunmen.

And under cross-examination from attorney Oswest Senior-Smith, Craine said he was aware that the bodies had a degree of decomposition, which might have resulted in potential loss of evidence and might have obscured bruises, but not lacerations.

He said his interpretation was based on the Pounder’s interpretation report and the body map diagnosis he provided. He said he had not inspected the scene at Crawle to date, but he had seen video footage of it.

Government forensic analyst Marcia Dunbar, who also testified yesterday, said gunpowder residue was found on the palms of one of the four persons killed by the police.

She said swab samples from the four deceased she tested on May, 30 2003, revealed a trace level of gunpowder residue on both palms of Matthew James’ hands.

But she told the court that trace level residue can be secondary and could be passed from one person to another.

“The residue can be transferred to another person’s hands by touching even though that person did not fire the gun.”

Dunbar said gunshot residue was also found on the swab of the hands of four of the six accused policemen – corporals Shane Lyons and Patrick Cooke and constables Rodney Collier and Lenford Gordon. No residue was found on the hands of Constable Devon Bernard, she said.

The hands of Senior Superintendent Reneto Adams, who led the police operation at Crawle, were not swabbed by the police.

Dunbar told defence attorney Neita-Robertson that when a body is placed in a refrigerator and moved several times, it becomes moist and that the moisture could remove residue from the hands.

Meanwhile, Constable Donovan Thompson of the Special Anti-Crime task Force, who was at Crawle during the incident and who is now hiding in the witness protection programme abroad, in his continued cross-examination, told defence attorneys he did not remove his gun from the holster at any time during the shooting at Crawle.

He denied a suggestion from defence attorney Earl Witter, that corporals Richard Ramsay and Tyrone Brown and others were “all part of a nasty little plan orchestrated by deputy commissioner Mark Shields to get Senior Superintendent Reneto Adams and all those brave crime fighting officers who stood with him at a place you called Pennants.”