A testy witness was yesterday grilled at the Tivoli Enquiry about her motive for leaving her three-month-old and 12-year-old children to assist people injured during the security forces’ operation to apprehend Christopher ‘Dudus’ Coke in May 2010.

The witness, Sharon Warren, gave evidence along with Lelieth James — both witnesses of advocacy group Tivoli Committee — after the expected testimony of three Jamaica Defence Force (JDF) soldiers did not go ahead as expected.

Those soldiers are expected to testify to seeing at least eight police personnel shooting unarmed civilians in Tivoli Gardens in May 2010.

Yesterday, the inference from Warren’s questioning by Valerie Neita-Robertson, one of the attorneys for the Jamaica Constabulary Force, and Linton Gordon for the JDF, was that Warren was one of the women designated in the community of Tivoli Gardens to assist injured criminals who were opposing Coke’s arrest.

“Are you aware that there are women in Tivoli who wear bags like the one you have on and they go and collect spent shells?” Neita-Robertson asked at one point.

“I don’t know,” Warren said, adding that she uses her bag, which was slung across her chest, to collect money.

At another point, Neita-Robertson asked about women in Tivoli Gardens who assisted wounded gunmen during police operations over the years, but the witness, in a heated exchange with Neita-Robertson, said she knew of none.

Neita-Robertson said she knew it as a fact, which drew the objection of Lord Gifford, who appears for the Office of the Public Defender. The Queen’s Counsel said Neita-Robertson was giving evidence when she said she knew for a fact that women in Tivoli assisted gunmen over the years during shoot-outs with the police.

Not backing down, Neita-Robertson said she lives in Jamaica and that she knew this. She added that police have reported this type of behaviour on numerous occasions.

Warren had said in a statement that on the morning of May 24, 2010, when the operation to apprehend Coke began, she got dressed and went on the road, got flat and waited to assist people who may need her help.

She said in her evidence-in-chief, led by attorney Michael Williams, that she assisted three persons between Monday and Tuesday.

She said the first man she assisted was an injured Damion ‘Lion King’ Lindsay, whose girlfriend was helping him through a gully in the community. She said she helped him to a shop.

She said on May 25 she was at home when she heard “bawling” for murder outside. She said she saw a woman named Adina Darby and her daughter crying.

Warren said the daughter told her that Nicholas, the father of her child, was shot. She said she went to assist him onto a handcart and, along with another man, attempted to push him to Kingston Public Hospital. She said she never got far when soldiers started firing at her, even though she lifted up her shirt baring her breasts to show she was a woman. She said she had to run, leaving Nicholas on the cart. He succumbed to his injuries.

Warren said that on her way back she spotted Darby lying shot in a pathway and eventually helped her.

However, Warren’s apparent act of kindness wasn’t about to go unchallenged.

Neita-Robertson, who led the charge, asked if she knew that the gully was used as an escape route for gunmen. However, the witness said she didn’t know that and added: “I would have to ask you that.”

Asked about a gully with stove where gunmen would hide, Warren said she only knew about a dirty gully with garbage.

Questioned about inaccuracies in her statement she said Tivoli Committee head Lloyd D’Aguilar may have added them.

Asked again why she would leave her three-month-old baby to assist people, she said: “Because they need help.”

Gordon, in his questioning of the witness, asked if she didn’t think her children were her priority. However, she said no shots were being fired in her vicinity at the time she went out.

“Who teach you to get flat and go road go help people?” Gordon asked.

“Show me watch,” Warren replied.

The enquiry is looking into the circumstances surrounding the death of 73 people resulting from the police/military operation.