Reduced adjective clause

[moonlike]

Hi
I came across the following exercise concerning reduced adjective clauses:

• The suspect can be seen in the photographs were just released by the police.

Actually the exercise wants the students to underline the adjective clause and to determine wether it's correct or not.
I was also just obssessed with the idea of adjective clause and searching wether it's correct or not in that senetnce, that I totally lost track of "were" in the sentence that it's incorrect and has to be "was".

In a nutshell, I thought the original sentence was "The suspect who can be seen in the photographs were {was} just releases by the police", and the reduced form is "The suspect seen in the ....".

Could you kindly help me with this exercise. I was shocked when I saw the answer key that had just mentioned there's something wrong with the verb "were" and nothing had been mentioned regarding the first part of the sentence. Are there two mistakes in the sentence? one concerning adjective clause and one regarding "to be verb"?

 

[5jj]

The sentence is simply not correct English.

It needs to be either: The suspect can be seen in the photographs which were just released by the police.

or: The suspect, who can be seen in the photographs, [STRIKE]were[/STRIKE] was just released by the police.

In both cases, the 'were/was released' form would be more natural in British english as a present perfect.

 

[SoothingDave]

Or:

The suspect can be seen in the photographs just released by the police.​