‘Ah keep hearing voices’ –Prison officer tells CoI

By Shauna Jemmott

COMMISSIONERS trying to make sense of the recent riots at the Camp Street Prison have learnt, on Friday, just how resourceful prisoners can be under pressure.When Prison Trainer/Instructor Owen Charles took to the stand,
he detailed to the commission that prisoners were somehow able to get their hands on ‘Jeyes Fluid’ and ‘pepper water’, which they put together to make what Charles described as “an unfamiliar concoction” which they used to incapacitate him.

In order to give the commission an idea of how events unfolded on the day in question, Charles said he had reported for duty as usual at about 06:50hrs. It seemingly was his turn to serve breakfast to the prisoners in Capital ‘A’, but he was advised by Officer in Charge (OC), Kevin Pilgrim, not to open the door to Capital ‘A’ without strong support from the other ranks.

JAMMED FROM INSIDE
The first time he tried to open the door, Charles said, it appeared to have been ‘jammed’ from the inside. On realising this, he said, he reported the matter to Pilgrim, who then pleaded with the inmates to release the door.

Charles said he was about five feet from the door when he heard someone fumbling with it, so he tried it again, and this time it opened.

“You could hear when they were fondling the door,” he said, adding: “You couldn’t see nobody; you know the difference between metal and people’s voices.”

Later into the inquiry, Charles would explain that the door has a multiple-lock system, and as long as prisoners place an object within a quarter-inch of it on the inside, opening from the outside using the keys becomes impossible.

He never got around to saying whether he had succeeded in serving them breakfast, but he explained that while the inmates were being evacuated from Capital ‘A’, Shaka McKenzie, one of the 17 who perished in the fire, tried to derail the process.
FIERCE PROTEST
Charles said McKenzie, who probably was against the move, ran up the stairs in fierce protest, and began attacking those prison officers at the door with part of a bed frame.

On seeing this, Charles said, he, being the one with the keys, and fellow officers were forced to lock the door again, doing so on the instruction of Assistant Superintendent Hudson. The “unfamiliar concoction” was then thrown into his left eye, temporarily blinding him.

Despite the severe burning in his eye, Charles said, he tried to act normally and keep his eyes open for the sake of his colleagues, whose lives were, so to speak, in his hands at the time.

“It was a risk to close my eye at that time. I thought it was a big risk,” he told the Commission, comprising Justice James Patterson, Human Rights Activist Merle Mendonca, and former Director of Prisons Dale Erskine.
In the confusion, however, he tried the wrong key, and it was only because of the quick thinking of another officer that the day was saved, as the prisoners had by this time become decidedly aggressive.

“Had they overrun us on the landing and made it into the prison yard,” Charles said, “society would’ve been in chaos.”

He said that by the time he had gone to seek help for his eyes and returned to the scene, he saw smoke coming out of a hole in Capital ‘B’. Upon enquiring what had transpired in his absence, he was told that during the fire in Capital ‘A’, two inmates had succeeded in crawling to safety through the hole in the wall separating the two dormitories.

He was also told that one of those prisoners had claimed that Shaka McKenzie had thrown a mattress on him as he was attempting to escape.

Charles said that when the fire had subsided, he saw a prisoner named Marcellus Verbeke exiting through the Capital ‘A’ door; and as he stood on the corridor outside the affected dormitory, he saw the gruesome remains of some of those prisoners who had perished in the fire.

Under cross-examination by Attorney-at-law Eusi Anderson about what he saw in that room, Charles broke down, saying, “Sir, to be honest, I don’t like to remember it, but ah got to talk.”

He said that though he has since received counselling, he still remembers what he’d witnessed as if it had happened only yesterday.

“Ah keep hearing voices; it’s taking a toll on me onto this day,” Charles said, adding: “I saw human bodies in different positions. I just couldn’t take it anymore; I just leave the catwalk…
I went into the ‘trade shop’ and I just start getting a pounding headache.”

Noting that the medication he has been given makes him feel funny, Charles said, “I never saw them [pills] before…one day I nearly get knock down on the road because of how the pills dem get me.”