By Omar Anderson, Staff Reporter
GREGORY PATRICK, an 18-year-old student, took the stand at the Braeton Coroner's inquest yesterday and denied fleeing the police at Lot 1088 Fifth Seal Way, Braeton on March 14, last year, although his bag with his textbooks were found at the scene the same morning.
Patrick told the Coroner, Mrs. Lorna Errar-Gayle, and the 12-member jury, that he had last visited Lot 1088 a month before the killings on March 14.
The student, who last week testified of seeing blood three to four inches deep, in two bedrooms at the house, told the court that water from a broken pipe in the bathroom could have flowed into the bedrooms, as it did into the living/dining room.
Cross-examined by Carolyn Reid, a lawyer representing the police, Patrick said he usually spent weekends at Lot 1088 with his cousin, Curtis Smith, 20; Christopher Grant, 17; and 15-year-old Ronald Beckford. He said, however, that his mother told him to stop sleeping there and he discontinued the practice a month before March 14.
He said he slept occasionally at Lot 1088. He told the inquest he was "extremely" sure he wasn't sleeping there on March 14, as he wouldn't have been alive. He denied Ms. Reid's suggestion that he was among several persons who escaped through a back door at Lot 1088, as it was padlocked and chained.
Patrick, who said in his deposition last week that he removed a bag from one of the rooms which belonged to his cousin, said yesterday that he thought it was necessary to take the bag. He admitted stepping in blood to retrieve the bag, but said he had since destroyed the blood-stained pair of sneakers as he didn't think the shoes were important.
The student said he had seen a broken bathroom pipe with water running into the living/dining room. He said he wasn't sure if the water flowed to any other area in the house.
Regarding gunshot holes which he said he saw on a front bedroom aluminium louvre window, Patrick told the court that while he was not a firearm expert, his common sense told him that the holes he saw on the window were gunshot impressions. He denied a suggestion that he didn't know what he was talking about.
Last week, Patrick told the inquest he went to Fifth Seal Way at 6.25 a.m. on March 14, last year, and yesterday he said that when he left there around 8.25 a.m. he didn't hear any gunshots being fired, and neither did he see any bodies being removed.
He said that when he went inside Lot 1088 on March 14, about 50 other persons went in the house as well, but Patrick testified that he didn't see anyone removing anything from the house.
He knew Gleaner reporter Claude Mills only two weeks ago, he said, having met him at the Spanish Town Resident Magistrate's Court where the inquest into the killing of the seven young men by the police is being held.
Questioned by jurors, he said water flowing from the broken pipe in the bathroom could have run into the bedrooms. But he said he couldn't definitely say that was the case as the rooms were covered with blood.
The witness said also that the bag with books were his, but that he had lent both to Smith who he said was also attending school at the time. Patrick said that a computer and physics books were in the bag.
The inquest continues today.
