The detective sergeant who was the driver of one of two police cars in a 2019 operation to head off armed gangsters who were “going on a shooting spree”, yesterday described the grisly scene in which two alleged Klansman gangsters were killed during a face-off with cops on Garbally Drive in St Catherine.

People in Courtroom Number One of the Supreme Court in downtown Kingston could hear a pin drop during most of the detective’s testimony in the trial of 33 people accused of being members of the feared gang.

The witness said, upon arrival at the scene the team with which he had travelled was greeted with the sight of a bullet-riddled brown/champagne-coloured Axio motor car with a smashed windscreen. The vehicle was the same one which had eluded him earlier during a chase through the streets of Spanish Town. All but one of the three occupants were dead, he said.

On Wednesday afternoon when the sleuth, who is assigned to the Counter-Terrorism and Organised Crime Investigations (C-TOC) Brands of the constabulary took the stand for the first time, he had said that on the day in question (January 25, 2019) he had been at his office with other detectives, including the lead detective in the case who finished testifying this week, when on receiving certain information they headed to the St Catherine North Police Division in an unmarked police vehicle.

He said they drove around the area in hope of “preventing [the] men from going on a shooting spree”. He said they were able to track the movements of the vehicle with the alleged gangsters by secretly listening to an ongoing conversation with the men, aided by Witness Number One — a former gang member-turned-Crown witness — through an open telephone line.

The lead police investigator in the matter, who had completed testifying earlier this week, in his evidence said the information gleaned from that phone call had been fed to another police team which had been assigned to “intercept” the car with the suspicious men.

Yesterday, the detective sergeant, under questioning, described for the court the aftermath of that shooting.

“I noticed that a male was crouched inside the front seat, he was bleeding, he appeared to be lifeless,” he told the prosecutor leading the evidence.

He said there was a second “male lying on the roadway in some bushes”. He also “appeared lifeless”. He said the third occupant of the vehicle, who happened to have been Witness Number One and who the police that night took to a safe house, “appeared shaken”.

The detective sergeant also corroborated the evidence of the lead detective regarding the collection of a Ruger handgun and ammunition inside a yard on Jones Avenue in Spanish Town while he waited nearby in an unmarked police vehicle.

The lead detective had, during his testimony, told the court how he, in the company of Witness Number One, drove to to a yard on Jones Avenue , which was part of the gang’s stomping ground, under the pretext that the former gangster was his nephew.

Witness Number One, he said, introduced him to two unsuspecting gangsters as his uncle.

Yesterday, the detective sergeant also recalled for the court the reactions of three of the accused now on trial and Witness Number Two, a former gang-member-turned-State witness, when they were arrested during a joint police military operation in June 2019. He said the accused, Brian Morris, otherwise called Rooster, upon being informed that he was a suspect in a gang investigation, had declared, “Boss, mi nuh inna nuh gang, mi a working man.”

According to the sleuth, Witness Number Two, at the time a suspect, when cautioned stated, “Boss, mi nuh have a choice, if mi resist, mi dead.” He said six cellular phones were seized from his home.

He said the accused Fabian Johnson, otherwise called Crocs, who was arrested on Beeston Street in Kingston, had claimed that he was an “entertainer and sparred with I-Octane” (recording artiste Byiome Muir).

In the meantime, his recollection of the arrest of the sole female accused among the 33, Stephanie Christie, otherwise called Mumma, corroborated the testimony of his colleague. The lawmen said an early morning visit to the Niceville community in Yallahs, St Thoma,s found Christie ensconced in a Toyota Noah amidst the bustle of preparations for her husband’s ordination planned for later that day.

Yesterday, the detective said Christie, when told she was a suspect in the investigations into the gang and cautioned, said, “Me Mr [name withheld], which gang yuh a talk ’bout?” Her pleas to be allowed to remain for the ordination were not accommodated, he said.

The detective also positively identified for the court the accused Jermaine Robinson, a member of the Jamaica Defence Force, whom the detective said was found at Up Park Camp in the course of the investigations and taken into custody at Grants Pen Police Station in St Andrew.

The trial resumes on Monday at 10:00 am.