A senior politician who lived close to the scene where three men were killed by police 13 years ago on Acadia Drive in St Andrew testified Tuesday that he had witnessed the triple fatal shooting from a nearby apartment window.

Six policemen – Sergeant Simroy Mott, Corporal Donovan Fullerton and constables Andrew Smith, Sheldon Richards, Orandy Rose and Richard Lynch – are on trial for murder in relation to the January 12, 2013 shooting that claimed the lives of Matthew Lee, Mark Allen and Ucliffe Dyer.

All the accused cops were present along with a seven-member jury as the politician took the stand for a second day, describing what he witnessed under questioning from the prosecution.

The politician indicated that he had an unobstructed view of the midday killings through a large master bedroom window in his then apartment.

While revisiting his testimony made on Monday, the witness detailed the death of the three men.

He described observing three vehicles: a Mitsubishi Outlander, a pickup which carried five lawmen and a ‘Kingfish’ motorcar which arrived later carrying two more policemen.

The witness said before the arrival of the Kingfish, he saw one man sitting in a white shirt on the ground with two lawmen near him, another man of Indian descent in the front of the Outlander and another in the backseat of the Outlander in a red shirt, with three other cops present.

The witness explained that all five cops were armed as they stood in various positions around the Outlander.

“All of them had weapons that, I would say, from my layman’s perspective, appear to be, or were M16s,” said the politician.
The witness continued to recall his previous day’s testimony, responding to questions from the prosecution.

“I first saw the man in the white shirt when he was on the ground, sitting, and the officers had guns pointed at him, after hearing explosions towards the back, he was then lying on the ground,” the witness explained.

Regarding the other two civilians, the witness indicated that, at one point, the man of Indian descent had seemed to be giving what appeared to be car papers to one lawman. He said the man in red shirt meanwhile exited the car with his hands up and a policeman shouted at him before the man began to run.

“Immediately, as he put up his hands and came out of the car, and he was shouted at and he started to run. The shots started to ring out,” the witness recalled, adding that the man ran into the yard of a home directly across from the apartment complex.

“The officer closest to the wall made his way to the wall and started to fire over the wall. The officer at the front, ran into the yard. It’s basically at that time that the Kingfish pulled up,” he said.

The witness had testified earlier that morning that two men dressed in police vests over dark blue and beige shirts respectively were in the Kingfish.

“The officer in the beige with the vest emerged,” he noted.

The policeman then alighted with a handgun, the witness said.

“Over the years I have gotten a certain amount of familiarity with handguns and guns in general,” he explained before detailing what the cop did next.

“He ran, shot in the direction of the man on the ground, [and] ran around to the man who was in the front passenger seat,” the witness explained. ‘

He told the court that the man in the white appeared already dead when the lawman appeared to shoot him.

He explained that by that time, the other two cops moved in the direction of the yard while the officer in the beige pulled out the Indian man out of the car.

The witness added that only seconds seemed to have passed between the Indian man being dragged out of the car and appearing “lifeless” on the ground.

“There were continuous shots being fired in the yard, and then it sounded like there were shots being fired from all over,” the witness said.

In sharing new information on Tuesday, the witness recalled watching five policemen picking up three bodies from various locations and loading them into the pickup.

He said the pickup then left the scene, carrying the bodies and five lawmen, after which the Kingfish was parked in the road by the remaining lawmen, blocking traffic.

Recalling the swiftness of the incident, he said: “Everything from I went to the window to when the bodies were put in the van, was about five minutes.”

The witness, under questioning from the prosecution, said he discussed the incident with his partner and wrote down what he saw. However, defence attorney High Wildman, who is representing Fullerton, immediately objected to the line of questioning citing rules against self-corroboration.

The prosecutor was ordered to rephrase her question, to which she complied. However, things got heated after a further objection from Wildman to which the prosecutor refused to yield – escalating to such a level that Presiding Judge Justice Sonia Bertram Linton stormed out of the courtroom.

Bertram Linton returned to dismiss the court for lunch, after which, the trial continued with few interruptions.

In the immediate aftermath of the incident in January 2013, residents told the Jamaica Observer that the fatal shooting occurred while the three men had been returning from the Constant Spring Police Station where Dyer, who was on bail in relation to crimes committed in the community, had gone to report as a condition of his bond. Lee, who was not from the area but shared a mutual friend with Dyer, had reportedly agreed to transport Dyer to the station.

The cops were arrested and charged in August 2019, six years after the killings, following a ruling by the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions.

Fullerton was further charged with making a false statement to the Independent Commisssion of Investigations (Indecom).
The charges followed an Indecom probe which the commission said had been delayed by court action despite its completion in 2017.

The trial continues on Thursday when the witness is expected to continue his testimony.