THE detective sergeant who was the driver of one of two police cars in a deadly 2019 operation to intercept armed gangsters aligned to the St Catherine-based Klansman gang, who were aboard a motor vehicle in the old capital, yesterday began giving evidence in the unfolding trial of 33 alleged members of that outfit.

The detective sergeant, who is assigned to the Counter-Terrorism and Organised Crime Investigations (C-TOC) Branch of the constabulary, said on the day in question (January 25, 2019) he was at his office with other detectives, including the lead detective in the case, who finished testifying this week, when on receiving certain information they headed to the St Catherine North Police Division in an unmarked police vehicle.

He said they drove around the area in hopes of “preventing [the] men, [who were aboard a brown motor car], from going on a shooting spree”. He said they were able to track movements of the vehicle by secretly listening to an ongoing conversation with the men aided by Witness Number One — a former gang member turned witness — through an open telephone line. The lead police investigator in the matter earlier testified that the information gleaned from that phone call had been fed to another police team which had been assigned to “intercept” the car with the suspicious men.

Yesterday his colleague said, based on what he was hearing on the call, he drove along Martin Street in the old capital when upon getting to the intersection of Manchester Street he observed patrons at what appeared to be a party. He then described for the court a sinister sight involving three men on a wall and a male dressed in a hooded top with what appeared to be a firearm in his right hand.

He said that the individual, who was moving in a furtive manner and had been “peeping down the street”, on observing the approaching vehicle, “took about two steps backwards”.

The witness, who left off detailing what arose his suspicions about the supposedly armed individual, is to this morning resume his account of the incident which ended in a shoot-out with the second police team on Garbally Drive in Spanish Town and the death of two of three men who had been aboard the “death car”.

— Alicia Dunkley-Willis