BY PAUL HENRY Co-ordinator -- Crime/Court Desk henryp@jamaicaobserver.com Thursday, April 23, 2015
POST-MORTEM reports have suggested that 35 of the civilians killed during the operation to apprehend Tivoli Gardens don Christopher 'Dudus' Coke in 2010 were shot in the back.
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| Sir David Simmons, chairman of the West Kingston Commission of Enquiry. |
The figure was cited yesterday by commission Chairman Sir David Simmons during an exchange with former police commissioner, Owen Ellington.
There is a statistic that has been bothering me and it doesn't seem to be bothering anybody else yet," Simmons said.
"Of the deceased, those 74, 35 received gunshot wounds to their posterior, their behind or their back. Thirty-five were shot in their back or their head," Simmons said, and asked Ellington whether he knew that this kind of statistics existed.
Ellington said he hasn't seen the ballistic reports, but said that this kind of figure could be "embodied" in them.
Ellington had testified, on a previous occasion, that he received intelligence that residents who were trying to leave Tivoli Gardens were killed by criminals. He also testified that the state of decomposition of a number of the bodies found in Tivoli Gardens suggested that the people were killed prior to the start of the police operation on May 24, 2010 to apprehend Coke, who was then wanted in the United States on drugs and gun-running charges.
Yesterday, Ellington -- under questioning from Carol DaCosta (attorney for the Tivoli Committee) -- said the police had exercised "considerable restraint" and that "we operated in the principle of minimum force". more
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