Derek Achong

Three men went on tri­al yes­ter­day for the mur­der of a San Juan man who was killed dur­ing a shoot­ing at a fam­i­ly lime in 2005. An­der­son "Weisle" Mapp, Ryan "Chris­t­ian" Stephan and Dar­ryl Bis­soon are be­fore Jus­tice Car­la Browne-An­toine in the Port-of-Spain Fifth Court charged with the mur­der of Col­in de Lan­dro, who lived at Quar­ry Road in San Juan. De Lan­dro, 24, was shot eight times while lim­ing with rel­a­tives out­side a neigh­bour's home on May 28, 2005. He sus­tained four gun­shot wounds to the head, and died a week lat­er while re­ceiv­ing treat­ment at the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex in Mt Hope.

De­liv­er­ing his open­ing ad­dress to the 12-mem­ber ju­ry and three al­ter­nates, pros­e­cu­tor Ran­dall Hec­tor said al­though it was on­ly one of the ac­cused who shot de Lan­dro, all three should be held li­able for his death. "They came walk­ing side by side. They were all armed. They all wore black clothes. "The rea­son for do­ing all of this was that they were go­ing to do a job they all planned," Hec­tor said. The pros­e­cu­tion con­tends that around 1 am on the day in ques­tion, the trio ap­proached de Lan­dro and his fam­i­ly dur­ing a lime and opened fire on them. Hec­tor said that when the men opened fire, de Lan­dro and his rel­a­tives scat­tered from the scene with his sis­ter Can­di-Ann be­ing shot in the hand in the process.

De Lan­dro's oth­er sis­ter Crys­tal man­aged to es­cape the trio by falling to the ground and pre­tend­ing to be dead, Hec­tor said. "There is clear ev­i­dence in this case that these men came with a pur­pose and plan with the mo­tive to kill," Hec­tor said. The three are be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Slewyn Mo­hammed, Ryan Cameron and Averell Fran­cis. First to tes­ti­fy in the tri­al yes­ter­day was po­lice pho­tog­ra­ph­er PC James, fol­lowed by de Lan­dro's sis­ter Gil­da Car­mona. Car­mona was not present dur­ing the shoot­ing, as she left the fam­i­ly lime ear­ly. She tes­ti­fied as to the lo­ca­tion of the lime and her fam­i­ly mem­bers that were present. The tri­al con­tin­ues to­day when more of de Lan­dro's rel­a­tives are ex­pect­ed to tes­ti­fy in­clud­ing his broth­er Ja­son Car­mona, who is al­so a po­lice of­fi­cer.