'I was afraid' - Witness says he lied about his name to INDECOM out of fear
Published:Wednesday | November 28, 2018 | 12:00 AMNickoy Wilson/Gleaner Writer
A Clarendon taxi operator told the court yesterday that he gave the Independent Commission of Investigations (INDECOM) a false name in his first three statements out of fear.
"I was afraid because of what I see happening," the witness said, testifying in the trial for three police officers at the Home Circuit Court in downtown Kingston.
Detective Corporal Kevin Adams, District Constable Howard Brown, and Constable Carl Bucknor are being tried for the murder of Andrew Bisson on September 5, 2011, in a board house in the Corn Piece district in Hayes, Clarendon.
The witness was responding to questions posed by presiding judge Chief Justice Bryan Sykes, who also asked him what had convinced him to give his real name seven years after giving his first statement to INDECOM.
He told the judge that about two weeks ago, he realised that INDECOM was the right channel through which to get justice.
INDECOM is said to have collected statements from the witness on September 6, 2011; March 27, 2014; July 12, 2014; November 5, 2018; and November 22, 2018. The witness is said to have used a false name when making the first three statements.
Before that, the witness was crossed-examined by Adam's attorney, Queen's Counsel Valerie Neita-Robertson.
The defence attorney asserted that it was the first time the witness mentioned policemen returning to the house on the day after the incident in his statement to INDECOM on November 22, 2018.
"Was it one or more than one?" Neita-Robertson asked.
"I can't tell you," the witness said.
She also asked, "When were you aware you were to be here in this hearing in 2018?"
"Good time now, miss," he said.
The attorney also suggested that the witness was missing in 2016 as INDECOM was unable to find him.
However, he rejected the assertion, saying: "I am a working man. I am always at work. I don't know."
CHRONIC AND HABITUAL LIAR
She then asked, "Did you move?" to which he answered, "No, miss."
In her final question to the witness, Neita-Robertson asked if the explosions he heard after the policemen entered the room were shots being fired by the deceased, to which the prosecution promptly objected.
As the cross-examination continued, Bucknor's attorney, Queen's Counsel Kenneth Churchill Neita, said that in one of the witness' statements to INDECOM, he said that a policewoman went into the house with the three policemen before Bisson was killed.
Churchill Neita pointed out that the witness failed to make mention of the policewoman when he addressed the court on Tuesday.
"You are a chronic and habitual liar," Churchill Neita said to the witness.
The witness is said to have given a description of one of the policemen that went into the board house with Bisson.
Brown's attorney, Dwight Reece, while reading from one of the witness' statements, said that he described one of the policemen as being a stout Indian man with grey hair.
Directing the witness to look at the men in the dock, Reece asked, "Which one of them is the stout Indian one with grey hair?"
The witness said, "None a them have grey hair. People change up."
The trial continues today.