Principal Officer Van Johnson was identified by prisoner Barry Parcoi as the individual who smuggled hacksaw blades into the prison, blades which may have been used in their early morning breakout.
The surprising revelation came yesterday from ASP James Farrington, who told of how, after being captured, Barry Parcoi pleaded with him, “please don’t let them kill me.”
Wakened by prison sirens around 4 o’clock on the morning of the breakout, ASP Farrington described how he was driving on Yamacraw Road from his home on the prison grounds and heard a voice say, “Stop!” and the “Bam!” of what sounded like a gunshot.
With his service revolver in hand and his night vision goggles in place, he spotted Prison Guard Sandy Mackey in front of a man, who he later discovered to be Neil Brown.
Farrington said, to Mackey’s immediate right, he saw two other persons heading south through the bushes.
He drew his revolver and shot at one. One of these persons he believed was hit in the leg.
According to Farrington, an individual to the right of the shot man started saying, “Officer, please don’t kill me.”
He said he recognized the person to be Barry Parcoi, and he asked him, “What are you doing here?”
When Parcoi saw him, according to Farrington, he said, – “Mr Farrington, please don’t kill me, please.”
All of the men, the officer said, were searched, but none of the items were turned over to him and he never asked for any.
Farrington said that all of the prisoners were handcuffed and lying face down while waiting on the bus to arrive, and when word of Officer Bowles’ death trickled out to officers in the Yamacraw Road area, he told the court that the scene became chaotic.
At that point, the officer said, everybody rushed the inmates and started to beat them.
He told the court that he tried to tell the angry officers that they could not “do this” because the prisoners were already restrained and that they had to get them back to the prison. No one listened to him, he said.
Eventually, ASP Farrington said, the prisoners were put on the bus, but the bus had difficulty leaving Yamacraw Road because angry officers surrounded the bus and held it up for about 5 to 6 minutes.
While attempting to keep officers from jumping on the bus Farrington described how a decorative stone pyramid was thrown and shattered the back glass where the prisoners were seated.
Turning his attention to the back of the bus, and right before he could get the last officer off the bus, Farrington said he heard what sounded like a gunshot behind him.
Spinning around, he saw a gun being pointed in the direction of Forrester Bowe.
He took the gun away from the officer who he later identified as Prison Guard Sandy Mackey. He said he pushed Officer Mackey off the bus and ordered the driver to take the bus to οΎ the prison compound.
When asked later why he took the gun away from Mackey Farrington said that he couldn’t chance Mackey walking off the bus with the gun, “I didn’t want anyone on the bus to get shot, including me.”
Magistrate Virgill asked ASP Farrington what the officers on board the bus were doing during the ride back, and this is where he informed the court that no other officers, except one unnamed officer
and the bus driver, were on the bus when it left Yamacraw Road for the prison.
Farrington explained how difficult it was getting the prisoners unloaded once back at the prison, as his attempts to take Parcoi off the vehicle first were met by a rush of police, defence force, and prison officers shouting at him, “Boy chief, these people have to dead.”
While trying to calm the angry, cursing mob, Farrington said that Brown “fell over” on the bus.
He asked Bowe if Brown was all right. He said Bowe told him that Brown sounded “like he is snoring.”
Going over Officer Farrington’s testimony of events which transpired in the Yamacraw Road area, Magistrate Virgill wanted to know if he saw any vehicles on the scene when he first arrived. “No ma’am,” Farrington replied.
Asked if he saw any other officers other than Mackey when he arrived, Farrington said, “No ma’am.”
Admitting that the inmates were handcuffed with their hands behind their backs, Officer Farrington, when asked by the Magistrate if Brown walked onto the bus alive, said, “Yes.”
Bowe, offered Farrington, was the only one who walked onto the bus with an apparent injury, a slight limp. Bowe’s limp, he believed, carne as a result of a shot he made at Bowe earlier that morning.
Before ASP Farrington took the stand, however, Corporal Freeman Basden, a twenty-year veteran prison officer, was scolded by Magistrate Virgill when he continuously insisted that he could not tell whether the sun was fully up or rising around the time events began unfolding around the prison bus.
In addition to reluctantly answering Magistrate Virgill’s question about the approximate time of day, Corporal Freeman also insisted that he could not tell how many officers were on the bus or where the prisoners were seated when he got on, because “he did not look around.”
“Why were you on the bus?” inquired Magistrate Virgill. “To assist if anything happened,” said Corporal Freeman.
“How do you know how many prisoner’s there were?” the Magistrate continued.
“I heard an officer say that three prisoners were on the bus,” Freeman replied, but he said that he did not recognize the voice of the officer who said it.
Getting off the bus at the prison, the officer said he was not even curious as to who was on the bus, so he just got off the bus without looking around.
Earlier testimony by Corporal Freeman has him joining a growing list of officers claiming to have captured or played a role in the capture of Barry Parcoi.
In the minutes following the breakout, according to his testimony, Freeman said he tripped up Parcoi and detained him until he got assistance in cuffing him.
There was sufficient lighting that morning to determine that the person he had capture was Barry Parcoi, said Freeman.
Each of the prison officers were asked to return to court to read their testimonies into the records, and the matter was adjourned to today at 10am.
By MARK HUMES, The Tribune
