A 32-year-old man from Cara­pichaima has been freed of rap­ing a teenag­er in 2016 af­ter she re­fused to tes­ti­fy against him. 

A nine-mem­ber ju­ry be­fore High Court Judge Gail Gon­za­les was yes­ter­day di­rect­ed to re­turn with not guilty ver­dicts for the man af­ter the vic­tim in­di­cat­ed that she did not want to pur­sue the mat­ter when she was due to tes­ti­fy. 

De­spite the out­come, the man, whose iden­ti­ty was with­held due to the na­ture of the case, was not im­me­di­ate­ly freed as he had an un­re­lat­ed and pend­ing case for mur­der. 

The man was ac­cused of at­tack­ing the teen on April 1, 2016. 

She was walk­ing in Chase Vil­lage when she was ap­proached by the man, who al­leged­ly told her that he would kill her if she did not fol­low him. 

The girl and the man walked past her moth­er’s and grand­moth­er’s homes to Lime­head Road. 

He al­leged­ly took her to an aban­doned shack near a riv­er where he raped her be­fore al­low­ing her to leave. She made a re­port to the po­lice and the man was ar­rest­ed sev­er­al months lat­er. 

At the time of his ar­rest, the man de­nied any wrong­do­ing and claimed that he was lim­ing with three friends at a bar in the com­mu­ni­ty at the time he was al­leged to have at­tacked the teen. 

He was charged with rape and hav­ing sex­u­al in­ter­course with a fe­male be­tween the age of 14 and 16. 

When the tri­al com­menced on Mon­day, pros­e­cu­tors ten­dered the state­ments of un­con­test­ed wit­ness­es. 

While cross-ex­am­in­ing the po­lice of­fi­cer, who in­ves­ti­gat­ed the teen’s re­port and charged the man, his lawyer Roshan To­ta-Ma­haraj took is­sue with the ex­tent of his probe. 

The of­fi­cer ad­mit­ted that he did not in­ter­view res­i­dents of the com­mu­ni­ty, who the girl claimed saw her walk­ing with the man. He al­so ad­mit­ted that he did not in­ves­ti­gate the man’s claimed al­i­bi or place him on an iden­ti­fi­ca­tion pa­rade be­fore charg­ing him. 

State pros­e­cu­tors were forced to close their case against the man with­out the al­leged vic­tim’s ev­i­dence, as she did not at­tend Wednes­day’s hear­ing and sent a mes­sage that she was no longer in­ter­est­ed in the mat­ter.