By PAVEL BAILEY
Tribune Staff Reporter
pbailey@tribunemedia.net
THE mothers of three men police killed in Blair Estates in 2019 burst into tears when close-ups of their sons’ bloody corpses were shown in court yesterday after the long-awaited inquest into the matter began.
The actions of 12 police officers and three Defence Force marines are under scrutiny in the Coroner’s Court inquiry, which will examine whether the officers were justified in killing the men.
Tony Jamal “Foolish” Penn, Valentino “T-Boy” Pratt and Trevor “Coopz” Cooper were killed on Commonwealth Avenue in the early morning of May 17, 2019. The incident was one of the deadliest single cases of a police-involved shooting.
Acting Coroner Kara Turnquest-Deveaux and jurors heard testimony yesterday from ASP Mario Durell, who photographed the scene and the bodies of the victims.
He said when he arrived on the scene at 4.30am, he observed bullet casings scattered across the driveway and lawn leading to the front entrance. He said a silver coloured Nissan Note was parked in a two-door garage. It had extensive gunshot damage and most of its windows were blown out.
Inside the car was the body of a man with dreadlocks slumped over the front passenger seat with his head hanging out of the rear passenger door. ASP Durell said a black Glock .40 pistol was in the backseat near the deceased.
In a room next to the garage, he saw the body of another man lying face-up with a gun in his hand.
He said in a nearby washroom, police recovered a rusty silver coloured pistol.
He said after entering the residence, he found the body of a third man lying facedown in the middle of a bedroom doorway on the second floor with a gun found near him in a pool of blood.
He said he also saw gunshot damage on the door and walls near the corpse.
Outside the home, he said he saw a dead grey coloured pit bull with apparent gunshot injuries and its feet in the air.
He said police also recovered a black and silver coloured Ruger pistol in the western yard of the residence wrapped in plastic and submerged in the dirt.
He said a grey plastic bucket with wrappings containing marijuana was outside the residence, and two other packages of marijuana were recovered from a concrete flower pot in the backyard.
He said marijuana was confiscated and CSI collected the seized firearms.
Although Angelo Whitfield, who is marshalling the evidence, asked that the bodies of the dead men be blurred, relatives in court allowed the photos to be shown unedited. Two of the mothers became distraught when a closeup of their children’s blood-stained and bruised faces were shown to the Coroner.
K Melvin Munroe represents the 15 officers.
Romona Farquharson-Seymour and Ryzard Humes represent the estates of the deceased men.
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