KINGSTON, Jamaica – Former Public Defender Earl Witter has testified that he heard no gunfire in Tivoli Gardens during his close to two hours in the community on May 25, 2010, a day after the operation was launched to apprehend Christopher ‘Dudus’ Coke.

“I don’t recall hearing a single shot, Mr chairman,” Witter said, referring to Tivoli Enquiry Chairman Sir David Simmons.

Witter was among a party of people, including former Political Ombudsman Bishop Herro Blair and then head of the Red Cross, who were asked by then Prime Minister Bruce Golding to visit the area as independent observers following conflicting reports about the operation from Tivoli Gardens residents and police officers.

He said he saw one body. He said that Blair saw another man twitching at the piazza of a commercial building. He said this was pointed out to Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Sewell who was told that the man was in need of medical assistance.

Witter said he doesn’t know what Sewell did with the information.

He said by the time he and his touring party left that scene and passed back, the man was no longer moving.

Witter said he saw buildings that residents told him that bombs damaged. He also said residents complained of being restricted to their homes.

He spoke also of seeing fresh blood at a building block on that day and saw homes with blood in them. The former public defender said residents said that people were killed inside them.

He said on his visit to the Madden’s Funeral Home, he saw three mounds of nude or scantily clad bodies and was told by a worker that there were 56 bodies there. 

He said he never counted the bodies himself.

He said too that he heard a communication between a worker at the funeral home and a police officer. He said the police officer remarked that 16 more bodies were left to be picked up.

Witter told the enquiry that Sewell had told him that four guns were recovered from Tivoli Gardens.

Later that day, when he was briefing Golding, he said he expressed concern with the disparity between the number of bodies and guns recovered and was told by then Commissioner of Police Owen Ellington and then Chief of Defence Staff Major General Stewart Saunders that this wasn’t unusual.

“I wonder what they meant by that,” Witter told the enquiry. “I’m still curious to this day.”

Paul Henry