This is a study of the discourse structures of the first six resident witnesses in a truth commission that had garnered national and international attention, this is, the West Kingston Commission of Enquiry in Jamaica (also known as the Tivoli Enquiry). The truth commission was intended to explore what unfolded in a bloody attempt to arrest an alleged area leader of the Tivoli Gardens community. Within the framework of intersubjectivity, the study explores resident witnesses’ presentation of self, their community and their story amidst generally negative perceptions of garrison communities, more specifically the Tivoli Gardens community. These are communities constructed to serve political interests, and are arguably sustained through criminal operations (McGreal 2011; Jaffe 2012; Edmonds 2016). The challenge is escalated when resident witnesses’ cross-examining counsels include attorneys representing the police and the military, who for one, invaded their community on the day in question, and two, are the forces that oppose anti-governmental constructs inherent in garrison communities, such as Tivoli Gardens (Jaffe 2012). For this reason, of great interest within the entire speech situation are the segments in which the resident witnesses are cross-examined by the attorneys representing these entities. This study provides a detailed description of the residents’ representation of self, including how they manage and negotiate their identity amidst opposition. It also foregrounds the usefulness of context in the sense-making process of verbal and non-verbal utterances, and therefore shows and incorporates context in its multi-varied forms. I analyze the discourse, using tools within Dell Hymes’s (1972) speaking grid that allow me to dissect the context accordingly and reveal the communicative patterns in the data as identity is negotiated. I find that linguistic resources of labeling, narrativization, epistemic positioning and evidentials prove useful in co-constructing and strategizing identity formation. Additionally, an intersubjective approach reveals how the intersubjective ‘other’ can index interactants’ identity even in the physical absence of that ‘other’, and in so doing discloses other underlying complex social identities that precede but are relevant to the discourse.