Barbara Gayle, Justice Coordinator

Senior Deputy Director of Public Prosecutions Dirk Harrison, in outlining the prosecution's case yesterday at the murder trial of three policemen said the 12-member jury would be asked to consider the role they played.

The policemen are charged in connection with the murder of two men who were abducted from a plaza on Washington Boulevard, St Andrew, between 3 p.m. and 4 p.m. on December 23, 2004.

Assistant Superintendent of Police Victor Barrett and Constables Paul Edwards and Louie Lynch are charged with the double murder.

They were arrested and charged in June 2009 for the murder of 20-year-old Kemar Walters, an apprentice mechanic of Kitson Town, St Catherine, and 28-year-old Oliver Duncan, a shopkeeper and blockmaker of Olympic Gardens, Kingston 11.

TRIED TO COVER UP

Harrison, in outlining the prosecution's case, said there was a common plot and the jurors would be asked to consider the role of all three policemen. He said Barrett tried to cover up after Edwards and Lynch did their deeds.

He also told the jury that evidence was going to be led that Lynch and Edwards took the men away from the plaza and they have not been seen since.

He said the case was "almost dead" and was going nowhere until it was re-opened in 2008 and Emerson Henry, a member of the police party who was present at the plaza on December 23 , 2004, came forward. Four witnesses have so far testified at the trial in the Home Circuit Court.

Yesterday, Claudette Angus, the mother of deceased Kemar Walters, wept as she testified that she last saw her son two Sundays before he went missing.

Susan Osbourne said Duncan was her children's father and about 1 p.m. on December 23, he left home and did not return.

Cross-examined by attorney-at-law Valerie Neita Robertson, she said she did not know if Duncan was a part of a car-stealing ring. She said the morning before he disappeared, a man named Paul had threatened Duncan. She said about five days later, she saw Paul, and when she raised concerns about Duncan's safety, Paul said he was dead. She said she did not see the man who threatened Duncan in the courtroom.

barbara.gayle@gleanerjm.com