A neighbour has told a jury that dying St Lucy resident Andre Hinds said “two masked men shoot me” moments before he died at his Northumberland home in 2016.
The witness was giving evidence before a jury of four men and eight women in the No. 3 Supreme Court on Wednesday as the murder trial of Richan Robert Walrond of Back Ivy, St Michael, and Romario Renaldo Broomes of Greenwich, St Lucy, commenced.
The two denied murdering Hinds on August 25, 2016.
Hinds, who had the nickname Neckie, lived at the house with his wife, who she knew only as J, the court heard.
Asked if she was aware of what Hinds did for a living to make money, the witness told the court that he used to “sell marijuana” from his home.
She stated that on the night she was sewing a blouse and heard “some shots”.
She testified: “So frighten, I duck although I was in my house and I turn off the light and I heard a woman voice crying… In five minutes then I heard two men voices saying: ‘Something wrong, something wrong’.
“So I got my slippers and I went outside to see what was going on. I saw J in the distance and she was saying ‘somebody help me’ so I pick up speed and I approach her and she started to walk back to her home. Half of the door to her house was break off.”
The witness continued: “I proceed to go into the house and when I got into the house, I saw Neckie lying at the backdoor and I ask, ‘What happen man?’ and he said: ‘Two masked men shoot me’ and J proceed to say: ‘Although we gave them everything, dey still shoot him’.”
The witness recalled Hinds pointing under his left arm after she asked where he had gotten shot. She said that “all of this was seen under a lamp light” as the house had no electricity.
“I said to J ‘You call the ambulance?’. She said ‘Yes’. I said: ‘Well, your nightie is full of blood, you should change it before anybody get here because it is a mess’ and she did. And within a couple of minutes’ time, Neckie had lost consciousness. I guess he had passed away and I told her to wrap him up in the sheet that he was in. He had no shirt on and was only wearing a boxer.”
She testified that minutes after, Hinds’ brother arrived, followed by the ambulance, adding that it took J away from the scene as “she was about eight months pregnant”.
The witness told the court she heard two shots that night.
Walrond is represented by defence counsel Safiya Moore and Michael Rivera, while attorney-at-law Sade Harris represents Broomes before Justice Carlisle Greaves.
Earlier in her opening speech, Acting Deputy Director of Public Prosecutions Krystal Delaney, who is prosecuting with Acting Senior State Counsel Anastacia McMeo-Boyce, stated that the case was one based on the principle of joint enterprise.
Delaney told the jury: “This means that where one or two persons come to an agreement to commit an offence then they are all responsible for the commission of that offence. In this case their initial agreement, the State is saying, was to rob Andre Hinds but in furtherance of that plan, they were both armed with firearms and they both used the firearms and resulting from that Andre Hinds died and based on that principle we don’t have to prove who fired the fatal shot. They were both jointly involved in the commission of the offence.”
The prosecutor outlined that two masked men both carrying firearms appeared at Hinds’ house that night, and a struggle ensued between Hinds and one of the men during which several shots were fired.
When the men left the house, Hinds was on the floor bleeding from gunshot wounds.
He was later pronounced dead at the scene.
“It is the State’s case that the two men that entered the house were Richan Walrond and Romario Broomes and they went to that house intending to rob Andre Hinds,” Delaney said.
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