Attorney questions cop about omissions in statements

An investigator in the Clansman-One Don Gang trial yesterday brushed aside questions from a defence lawyer about omissions in his statement, claiming he had only recorded what was "dominant" and "readily came to mind".

Among the omissions agreed to by the detective sergeant under cross-examination from attorney-at-law Denise Hinson in the Home Circuit Court yesterday was the licence plate number of the gang's 'Duppy Truck', a brown Toyota Axio, which he testified he had recorded in his notebook. He said that he had recalled seeing the plate on the car from which men had reportedly fired at his service vehicle in the vicinity of Martin Street in Spanish Town, St Catherine. The men were later shot dead by other police officers on Port Henderson Road, also in the parish. The cop said that prior to the shooting, he had spotted a man in a hoodie with a firearm.

The car, the court heard, was nicknamed the Duppy Truck and was used whenever the gang was going on shootings or executions. However, when asked by Hinson why he had not included the evidence about seeing the man in a hoodie with a gun in his statement, the investigator indicated that he had no reason.

"I was writing a statement and the things that are dominant were what readily comes to mind," he said, even though he had admitted to referring to his notebook while recording the statement. The cop agreed that the presence of the brown car and the licence plate number would be dominant as well as the men who he had seen in the car but that he was not able to identify any of the men.

During the cross-examination, the cop also admitted that he had not written in his statement that one of the crown's star witnesses, a former gang member, had told him when he was arrested at his home that he would have been killed if he did not carry out the gangs' order.

"There are many things that I could have written in my statement," he casually said when Hinson first pointed out that that was nowhere in his statement. When pressed further by the lawyer, the cop added that he did not forget that it had happened.

The lawyer then asked him again if he would agree that he did not put it in his statement to which he replied "It's obvious that I didn't."