INTERVIEW with Tivoli Resident: The Dudus I Knew was a kind, decent man LLOYD: TELL us how long you have known the Dudus Coke family and how long you have been around them etc. SHARON: I am around the family for over thirty-odd years. His sisters and I were friends and I get close to the family. And just stay there with the family. I was like a daughter and a sister of his LLOYD: So you would have known him as a little boy SHARON: As a little boy coming up from Chin Loy Basic School, Denham Town Primary from where he passed and went to Ardenne High. He grew up in the community as a decent youth. Very principled. Deal with order properly. So I have nothing bad to say about him. LLOYD: Did you know his father Jim Brown? Tell us what you know? SHARON: Well don’t know much about Jim Brown. I was pretty young at that time. LLOYD: Was he close to his father? SHARON: Yes very close. Very close to his dad. Had a good relationship with his father. LLOYD: And his father lived here, and so on? SHARON: Yes. And he visited him every day, because he was living in Denham Town while the father was living here. And he was very close to his father. LLOYD: What about when he died?. SHARON: I remember when he died in prison. The same day when his son was buried. Later on after the funeral we got the news that Jim Brown had died in prison. LLOYD: And how did the people take it? SHARON: Very sad. Weeping and moaning in the community. LLOYD: So the people loved him? SHARON: Yes. From the father to the son. Love all over. His name can’t stop call. Every day you have to call Dudus name. Every day the people cry out for him because the community almost mash up without him. I’m talking about Jim. That’s why they chose Dudus to take over after his father died. Because of the love and the caring that his father showed to the people of the community. LLOYD: So how did they chose Dudus to take over SHARON: They just say from Jim Brown to Dudus. No choosing didn’t go on. The crowd just cover him the same day and say Dudus is the man. LLOYD: So when everybody saying Jim Brown was a bad man. And Dudus was a bad man. What do you say? SHARON: I don’t see why they should say that. I don’t know why they should say that. I don’t see anybody getting harmed. He doesn’t cause people to fear him. He was loving. The littlest child could go to him. LLOYD: So when they say that there was a torture chamber and they were torturing people. SHARON: That’s just rumour. That’s just rumor. Rumour. Just politics. The other Party draw those cards on him. Just rumor. Nothing like that. LLOYD: So as far as you know there was no torture chamber SHARON: No, you can look around the place. We didn’t have any torture chamber. Nothing like that. LLOYD: Because after the incursion they found a place where they said they found blood and that torturing was going on. SHARON: These men always keep dances. So whenever they keep dances they kill their goats, they kill their hogs, and look after their things. So any blood they found must be blood coming from the people who the soldiers killed, that they came in and found. No torture chamber was here. LLOYD: So you don’t believe that at all. SHARON: No no no. I can swear. LLOYD: They also said in the court documents that Dudus used a chain saw and cut a man in two. SHARON: Nothing like that. But the man technically told a lie on himself. Because when the judge ask him where on Dudus was the blood when he sawed the man, he said the blood was on Dudus’ feet. And if you use a saw and saw a man, all over you would be sprayed with blood. So that’s stupid. LLOYD: So the man was telling a lie on Dudus? SHARON: Lie. Yes. He was lying. We know him too a little youth who grew up in Denham Town. So I don’t know why he would do that. LLOYD: You wouldn’t deny that Dudus had a little army inside here? SHARON: A little army? Not really. The people love him and the guys stick around him. He give them business to start. A little hustle. He didn’t have any army to say bad man around him. Nothing like that. LLOYD: Did he give them guns? SHARON:No that I know of. But you know every garrison carry gun. Sometimes it come in by politicians, you don’t know how it come. He is not going abroad to buy gun and carry it to distribute. He gives men money to buy goods and go and hustle, and take care of their kids. LLOYD: But you wouldn’t deny though that there were men inside here with guns? SHARON: I wouldn’t deny it. As I said before guns are all over the garrisons. Anywhere in Jamaica you find guns. LLOYD: So guns were in Tivoli SHARON: Yes! LLOYD: Tell me about the barricades that they set up. Media made a lot of it. So did the military. SHARON: I don’t know much about the barricades. I don’t know why. What reason why. LLOYD: But you saw the barricades? SHARON: Yes. LLOYD: Where and where were the barricades SHARON: To the entrances into Tivoli LLOYD: Do you think these were effective barricades SHARON: No just little board and old pans and anything could just draw them out of the way. No extraordinary things, like fighting a war. Or anything like that. Nothing like that. Little zinc and board. Old fridge in the street which could be easily pulled away. We didn’t barricade in like it was an army we were going to fight. Because we couldn’t fight the army. LLOYD: Did you have any gunmen on the loose, or anything like that? SHARON: Nothing like that. Nothing like that. No man had a chance to fire a shot at the army or the police force. They came in on us so sudden. Everybody had to find a place to run. The majority of men who got killed was their doors they kicked off, going inside the house, dragged them outside and killed them. They were never in any shoot out and man dying and man firing shot. Nothing like that. LLOYD: So you know of no gunmen who died who were firing shots SHARON: No nothing like that. The majority of the people who died, they kick off door, pull them out of their house and kill them, sometimes in front of their mother. A little youth who lived in the house over there they killed him right in front of his mother inside the house. Right in front of his mother, his baby mother, his sister and about six more ladies and his son. They just kick off the door and go in and kill the youth in front of his parents and tell them that they can’t cry. Them deal with it a way. LLOYD: When you say majority that means there was a minority who died another way. SHARON: Because you had people on the street who died from gunshot catching them. It is not shootout. You have people walking and the snipers would shoot them. Because you even had a girl around there who when the helicopters saw here they dropped a bomb where she was and burn her up. So is not say that the people and them were at war. Because everybody who not lock down run. They killed one guy on my building. They went up to the last floor. A little half crazy youth. They just go in the house and kill him and draw him down. LLOYD: When Dudus was in lockup he wrote his mother a letter. Tell us about the letter that he wrote? SHARON: It was her birthday coming up and he wrote her that letter. And telling her how much he loved her and wanting her to have a happy birthday. LLOYD: How did she feel about it? SHARON: Well, she died the Wednesday and we received the letter the Thursday. So she didn’t get to read the letter. I didn’t get to read the letter to her. LLOYD: So when Dudus left Ardenne High School did he ever have a job, or did he just live here in Tivoli? SHARON: NO. He joined with other people and do business. Like sending his girlfriend abroad. Buy and sell. His mother was also a higgler. He use to control that side of it and buy the goods for her and sell. LLOYD: So you miss him? SHARON: Very much. Today I would not be hungry. He was there for poor people. Always there for us. He schooled my son. Send him to England to study. And now he passed out as a journalist. LLOYD: Dudus called .. what did he say? SHARON: No call .. when his mother was here, he used to call and we all talked to him. LLOYD: What did he say in terms of how he felt about the whole thing? SHARON: He said it is a part of life. He said we have to just have faith because one day we will see him again. LLOYD: Was he angry with Bruce Golding? SHARON: No he is not that type. He just take everything with a smile. He is just humble like that. LLOYD: Do you think Bruce Golding betrayed him? SHARON: If he betrayed him? Yes he betrayed. Bruce Golding and his PNP friends. LLOYD: But Bruce was defending him for a long time. He was refusing to sign the extradition warrant. SHARON: He only was pretending. Or else he wouldn’t give up in the end. Because if you are defending somebody you defend them to the end. So he was only pretending in the first part. LLOYD: So Bruce Golding was only pretending SHARON: Pretending or else he wouldn’t give up. No. LLOYD: While this was going on did you talk to Dudus about it. SHARON: Yes we talk to him. Right through because he had to cheer up his mother. He didn’t’ want her to hear all the news coming over the radio because it would affect her pressure. So I always talk to him and cheer him up and tell him to pray. Because he is a man who really believes in God. LLOYD: Did he think that they would eventually sign the warrant SHARON: He always says “Mama. All of what you are hearing is only rumor.” He never really took it serious. He didn’t believe it would happen LLOYD: How come? SHARON: He never took it serious to me. . LLOYD: What do you know about the relationship between him and Bruce? SHARON: Good relation going on. He would normally sit with him. Talk with him. When a meeting is going on he is always there around him and his friends. So I don’t know how this could happen. LLOYD: Bruce would come down here and meet with Dudus? SHARON: Bruce Golding and Dudus always had a good relationship. Always. He is always there on every last Thursday. Meet the people in the community. Anything they need they go to him. He would call over Dudus and they talk. He even go over there on the corner sometimes when is here and talk to the men. LLOYD: So Bruce Golding would walk over to the Presidential Clique office? SHARON: He always walk over to the Presidential Clique office and the two of them would have a talk. I don’t know what is their issue. But they always talk. LLOYD: This talking would go as far as up to when? How close to May 2010? What is your recollection? SHARON: It go on up until about – even in May they talk. LLOYD: He came here and talk to Dudus. You see it with your own eyes. SHARON: Yes Yes yes LLOYD: So Bruce is lying then because he said at the commission of enquiry that he had broken off speaking relationship with Dudus from 2008 because he didn’t act on a Security Forces request to expel some bad men in Tivoli SHARON: I don’t know of that. Posted in Latest Broadcast, Tivoli Gardens Massacre
Posted on: Sat, 24 Jan 2015 16:50:55 +0000
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