SUPERINTENDENT Gladys Brown Ellis yesterday gave wide-ranging evidence before the Tivoli Enquiry in which she said that only 69 people died in the May 2010 Tivoli operation, shot down arguments that cops had buried bodies as part of a cover-up, and recommended that the Kingston Public Hospital start making records of bodies brought there by the police.

Brown Ellis — whose evidence surrounded post-mortem, forensic processing and identification of bodies — testified to at least one body, that of Carl Henry, which had only a shrapnel lodged in the kidney. Her testimony contradicted residents’ claims that police shot him repeatedly while he lay on the ground.

She testified also that the body of a man, who relatives said was of unsound mind, was found outside a building, close to a hose. The body was clad in a coloured merino and naked from the waist down.

Brown Ellis was asked about the man of unsound mind, against the background of previous evidence that a man of similar description was shot inside of a house by cops and wrapped in a sheet.

The senior cop also testified that in 2010 she spoke twice with the mother who testified in the enquiry that cops killed her two sons in cold blood. She said that the mother never mentioned the manner in which her sons died.

Her evidence came on the final day of this session of the enquiry that is looking into the reported deaths of 74 people during the May 2010 operation to apprehend Christopher ‘Dudus’ Coke, who was wanted by the United States on drugs and gunrunning charges.

The enquiry resumes on November 23 and the evidential phase of the proceedings is expected to come to a conclusion by the close of that session.

Yesterday, Brown Ellis — who along with other police officers from Scene of Crime, Bureau of Special Investigations and the Major Investigation Task Force, were tasked with processing bodies resulting from the operation — said that her tally of bodies from the area of operation was 69.

She explained, during her examination-in-chief, that the figure 74 came about because five bodies that the police are treating as homicide victims, and had nothing to do with the operation were processed with the 69 as instructed by then Public Defender Earl Witter.

During her examination-in-chief, led by Jamaica Constabulary Force attorney Deborah Martin, Brown Ellis said that five bodies had to be buried four months after the operation because they went unclaimed and were not identified.

Meanwhile, questioned later by Peter Champagnie, the attorney for the Jamaica Defence Force, the superintendent said that 13 of the men who died were identified by their criminal records.

She said also that the bodies of the 69 were predominantly dressed in white shirt and blue or dark-coloured jeans, the mode of dress of men said to have been firing at members of the security forces to defend Coke.

The senior cop testified also that 11 of the 69 came from outside of the Corporate Area, hailing from as far as Manchester and Hanover, and that some had no address at all. Others were from the Corporate Area, but didn’t reside in West Kingston.

“We were not able to establish why they were in [West Kingston],” Brown Ellis added.

Evidence had been given previously that gunmen were imported from rural parishes and other places outside of West Kingston to defend Coke.

In her examination-in-chief, Brown Ellis shot down arguments that the police had been burying bodies in the May Pen Cemetery as part of a plot to cover up atrocities committed by lawmen during the operation. She said that post-mortem were conducted on 19 decomposing bodies in the May Pen Cemetery in May 27, 2010 and that she sent additional decomposing bodies there for autopsies.

She said she didn’t know how the 19 bodies got there, but that she was certain four of them, which had been burned, were murder victims. She said three were shot and killed in the Whitfield Town area, not far from West Kingston, after refusing to block roads during the period of the operation.

She testified too that police personnel and the doctor performing the post mortems in the Spanish Town Road cemetery came under heaving gunfire on the 27th and that she later learnt that the gunmen attacked them because of rumours they were there burying bodies. She said they had to be rescued by soldiers and that the gunfire appeared to be coming from the Trench Town area.

“It was bad,” Brown Ellis said of the shooting that rained leaves on them and sent bullets ricocheting off of tombs. “…I was just praying that the ground would open and take me in.”

At another point, Brown Ellis made some recommendations which include that the Kingston Public Hospital make a record of who in the force it receives bodies from and that the police be better equipped to handle and tag bodies.

She also testified that a woman, Gloria Smith, was shot dead by lawmen in Tivoli Gardens, while retrieving weapons from the bodies of gunmen.

No weapon was recovered from around her body. Another woman, Petrina Edwards, she said, was killed by gunmen. She denied that Edwards’ body was left by lawmen to be eaten by animals, as claimed by her relatives.