WEST KINGSTON ENQUIRY: Did Tivoli residents plant evidence?

There are suggestions that evidence was planted at a scene in Tivoli Gardens aimed at misleading the Commission enquiring into the May 2010 police-military incursion in Western Kingston.

Minutes after a retired police officer attached to the Office of the Public Defender, testified that he was summoned to an unoccupied house where he "found" three M-16 spent shells, a lawyer representing the Independent Commission of Investigations (INDECOM) said an investigator from that agency, had already processed the scene and cleared the area of all evidence.

Retired Deputy Superintendent of Police, Esworth Johnson testified that he was assigned to the Office of the Public Defender to ease the heavy workload caused by the flood of complaints in the aftermath of the incursion.

Johnson said on June 18, he was sent to Wilton Hill Drive in Tivoli Gardens, where he ventured to an occupied house.

He told the Commission that he was taken to the house by Jane McFarlane, who, while giving testimony months ago, said her son Martin Lindsay and stepson, Oshane Walker, were killed by the police.

READ: Tivoli children still traumatised by relatives' deaths — Mom

Johnson testified that he found the three spent shells — two on the floor and one in a couch.

He said they were pointed out to him by McFarlane in the presence of Detective Constable Lloyd Grant.

Under cross-examination by Deborah Martin, the attorney representing the Jamaica Constabulary Force, the retired cop said he could not recall whether he had labelled the spent shells before taking the envelope in which they were placed to the police post in Tivoli Gardens.

Johnson was also unable to recall whether dusting was done to the scene but stressed that the spent shells were quite visible.

But Yanique Taylor, one of the attorneys representing INDECOM, raised questions insisting that an investigator had been on the scene before Johnson arrived.