Photographer: Barrackpore crime scene recreated during probe

A crime-scene police photographer who took 31 photographs, in four days, related to investigations involving the killing of three friends by police officers in Barrackpore in 2011, said she only knew it was a murder investigation when the six officers on trial were arrested.

Cpl Valerie Hospedales was the fourth police photographer to testify at the trial of her six former colleagues at the Port of Spain High Court.

On July 22, 2011, best friends Abigail Johnson, 20, of St Mary’s Village, Moruga, Alana Duncan, 27, of Duncan Village, San Fernando and construction worker Kerron “Fingers” Eccles, 29, also of St Mary’s Village, were gunned down by police.

Six police officers – Sgt Khemraj Sahadeo and PCs Renaldo Reviero, Glenn Singh, Roger Nicholas, Safraz Juman, Antonio Ramadin – are accused of murdering the three.

Already, three police photographers have testified and their photographs tendered into evidence.

On Thursday, the same took place with Hospedales’s 31 photographs which she took on July 22, 23,29 and August 25, 2011.

Those photographs were of the crime scene at the corner of Rochard Douglas Road and Gunness Trace in Barrackpore and of a car which was under a shed at the Barrackpore police station. On two occasions, when she returned to Barrackpore, Hospedales said the scene was reconstructed. One of them involved the use of two vehicles in areas where two other vehicles were on the night of July 22, 2011, she said.

Questioned by lead defence attorney, Israel Khan, SC, Hospedales said she was not aware that there was an allegation that Duncan, Eccles and Johnson shot at the police.

She said she knew the vehicle at the Barrackpore Police Station was important to the case and took photographs of the inside but not the back.

She also could not say who was in the car on the night of the incident or how they were seated. All she knew was that there were three occupants and said she was only following instructions.

Hospedales was asked if she knew the six officers and she said she knew them from the robbery squad in the southern division and could not say if they were still being called to give evidence in other criminal cases.

She also did not know if any of them had disciplinary offences or reports against them.

Justice Carla Brown-Antoine is presiding over the trial which continues on Monday when Hospedales will return to be further questioned by defence attorney Ulric Skerritt.

The State is represented by attorneys Gilbert Peterson, SC, Elaine Greene and Giselle Ferguson-Heller. Arissa Mohammed also appears for the defence.