RETIRED Jamaica Defence Force (JDF) warrant officer Albert Myers admitted on Wednesday that in a statement he recorded and signed, he failed to include the names and regiment numbers of the soldiers who were assigned specific rifles before they went on operation at the home of accountant Keith Clarke.

Myers is one of the witnesses in the Home Circuit Court murder trial digging into the May 27, 2010 shooting death of Clarke.

On trial for the murder of the accountant are lance corporals Greg Tingling, Odel Buckley and Private Arnold Henry.

Myers, who was the firearms store supervisor in May 2010, told the court that he could not recall the reason for not including the names and regiment numbers for the soldiers. He said that he took the information that he put in his statement from the register in the firearms stores, admitting that it was protocol for the register to include information such as the name of the soldiers, rank, regiment number and the type of weapon assigned.

The retired army man said he assigned numbers 1 to 46 to each soldier who received a firearm from the stores before they went on the operation at Clarke’s house at 18 Kirkland Close in Red Hills, St Andrew.

The numbers used to represent the accused in the document Myers prepared were 38, 42 and 44.

“At some point I examined the original weapons book in relation to weapons I supervised the issuance of around May 17, 2010. The entries in that book at the arms store [were taken from] on another document. I compared it to the original entries and I signed it,” Myers said.

Peter Champagnie, King’s Counsel (KC), during cross-examination of the witness, asked if he would be correct if he said Myers was not the one to issue weapons to anyone.

Myers responded saying, “correct”.

“The document that was shown to you to which you said you saw your signature, was something essentially copied from another book?” Champagnie asked.

The witnessed answered saying, “correct, but I didn’t copy everything”.

Champagnie continued: “therefore, you yourself can’t say that what was in the book was 100 per cent correct”?

“Yes, that is true,” Myers said.

Prosecutor Jeremy Taylor, KC, during re-examination of the witness, asked him why he did not write out the names and regimental numbers of the soldiers to whom weapons were issued.

Myers responded telling the prosecutor that he couldn’t recall why and reiterated that he could not say whether or not the information he looked at in the weapons register was 100 per cent accurate.

Tingling, Buckley and Henry were a part of a police military team that went to Clarke’s house in search of then fugitive Christopher “Dudus” Coke who was wanted in the United States on drugs and weapons charges.

Despite reports of a heavy gunbattle, Clarke, who was in his master bedroom when he was shot dead, was the only fatality.

The trial resumes today.