BlackFacts Details

TRIPLE-MURDER COVERUP – Cop claims plot hatched on Sando Hill - Trinidad and Tobago Newsday

WOMAN police constable Nicole Clement admitted she signed a report on the killing of three Moruga friends in 2011 knowing it was false.

That report was the initial report the seven officers involved in the fatal police shooting on July 22, 2011, were required to give about the incident.

Clement was one of those officers. She and her colleagues Sgt Khemraj Sahadeo, along with PCs Ronald Riveiro, Glenn Singh, Roger Nicholas, Safraz Juman and Antonio Ramadhin were initially charged with the murders of Abigail Johnson, 23, Alana Duncan, 28, and Kerron 'Fingers' Eccles.

However, the three murder charges against her were discontinued in 2012, after she was given immunity by the Director of Public Prosecutions to turn State witness and testify against the six.

The six are now facing a judge and 12-member jury in the Port of Spain High Court for the murders and Clement has since said she 'would not be giving evidence' at the trial.

On Monday, Clement was deemed a hostile witness by trial judge Carla Brown-Antoine and the reading of the testimony she gave at the Princes Town magistrates court at the preliminary inquiry into the murders has started after which she will be further questioned by lead prosecutor Gilbert Peterson, SC, and the defence team of Israel Khan, SC, and Ulric Skerrit.

On Tuesday, Clement returned as scores of pages of her testimony were read. The only time she spoke was to recite the affirmation of the truthfulness of her evidence.

It was during her cross-examination by Khan at the preliminary inquiry that Clement spoke about the 'one squad, one song' police culture indoctrinated from 'training at the barracks.' She said she knew the report she signed was not true but said she did so because it was 'normal police culture.'

'Everyone sticks together…That is how we were trained to corroborate and write one report. That is the way we were trained. When something happens, we corroborate and write one report so our story will be along the same lines.'

According to her testimony at the inquiry, it was while she was on remand on the three murder charges, that she gave three statements to the police.

Clement also said the murder charges against her were 'false.'

'I did nothing to be charged with three counts of murder.'

She also said she did not give the three statements so the DPP could drop the charges against her but because it was the 'truth.'

After the charges were discontinued, she was charged with conspiracy to pervert the course of justice. She was then questioned by Khan on the conditions of the immunity she received.

Earlier in her testimony, she again spoke of the 'second' crime scene where, according to her, two of the three friends who survived the 'gunfight' at Barrackpore, were taken and shot.

While leaving the lonely gravel road off the M2 Ring Road, she said Riveiro exclaimed, 'Oh f--- doh tell me I shoot the tyre,' since one of the tyres was wobbling. He determined it was a stone.

Some 20 minutes later, they then put the sirens on and treated it as an eme