Now even before the arraignment, there was some heated back and forth outside the courtroom about the role of the 2 minors. The allegation is that Brackett and his crew paid these minors to start the tire fire. Well, these boys happen to be a part of Dianne Finnegan’s Youth Apprenticeship Program and she was there to defend her youth. We start off with Finnegan’s comments and move on to Smiths and Brackett’s as they deny the allegation.

Dianne Finnegan - Coordinator, Youth Apprenticeship Programme
"The sad thing about it is that I've been saying forever that when you talk about crime and violence young people don't just get up and do things. It's instigated, it's because of a reason and what is so sad here is that adults who you think should know better, who say they represent the people and are there to try and make a difference, a positive difference in people's lives are the ones who are manipulating these individuals to get their agenda across and that is wrong and that is sad."

Perry "Stix" Smith - Organiser, Day of Healing
"Yes we work with the youth them pan wa daily basis. We sit down, we cry, we break bread with these youths. We go inna fi we pocket and look out for these youths and we never put no youth pan the front line to endanger their selves. So for somebody to make an allegation saying that we pay some youth fi gone out they gone burn some tyres; who knows if da the youths da do that, who knows if da no somebody older they do that? But at the end of the day for you to make allegations like that, saying that we paid these youths fi gone out there gone burn some tyres that absolutely wrong mien you understand me. And these same youths ya, you should have talked to these youths because these youths have been victimised throughout this apprenticeship programme, getting deduction after deduction to go into the apprenticeship programme. They take a 25 for this, they out a something for that you understand me. We no pay the youths they fi do nothing destructive, nothing out of the way."

Geovanni Brackett - President, COLA
"COLA has never hired any minor and we do not support it, we condemned it and that's our final statement."

After the interview Finnegan and Smith got into a heated exchange about her program.

As we told you the minors return to court on November 30th. The report is that the same person who posted bail for Brackett, Smith and Pascacio also posted bail for the 2 minors.  And we note that police officers were stationed outside the courtroom for the arraignment, to deter any kind of COLA commotion.