DEREK ACHONG

A 43-year-old man has been re­mand­ed in­to cus­tody af­ter ap­pear­ing in court charged with the mur­der of pre-school prin­ci­pal Jezelle Philip.

Kirk “Jor­don” Fields, of Telemacaque Street, East Dry Riv­er, Port-of-Spain, ap­peared be­fore Chief Mag­is­trate Maria Bus­by-Ear­le-Cad­dle in the Port-of-Spain Mag­is­trate’s Court, yes­ter­day morn­ing, charged with mur­der­ing Philip, 48, of Ed­in­burgh 500, Ch­agua­nas, last Mon­day.  

Dressed in a plaid shirt and jeans, Fields stood silent­ly in the pris­on­er en­clo­sure as the in­dictable charge was be­ing read and was not called up­on to plead to it. 

Af­ter read­ing the charge, Bus­by-Ear­le-Cad­dle asked Fields if he had any is­sues which she could make note of. 

Fields, whose voice was bare­ly au­di­ble in the court, was re­peat­ed­ly asked by Bus­by-Ear­le-Cad­dle to speak loud­ly and clear­ly. 

Fields ques­tioned the length of time be­tween him be­ing ar­rest­ed and tak­en to court. He al­so en­quired about the process of how a mur­der case moves through the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem.

Bus­by-Ear­le-Cad­dle ex­plained that a mur­der ac­cused is not al­lowed to plead guilty be­fore a mag­is­trate and must par­tic­i­pate in a pre­lim­i­nary in­quiry be­fore one or a suf­fi­cien­cy hear­ing be­fore a High Court Mas­ter be­fore the case even­tu­al­ly goes to tri­al be­fore a High Court Judge. 

Quizzed by Bus­by-Ear­le-Cad­dle over a ban­dage on his left fore­arm, Fields said it was pro­tect­ing a stab wound. 

Bus­by-Ear­le-Cad­dle al­so asked Fields about his heavy breath­ing and he claimed that he had a heart con­di­tion. 

Af­ter con­firm­ing that Fields had med­ica­tion for his con­di­tion, she agreed to ad­journ the case to Feb­ru­ary 27. 

Dur­ing the hear­ing, po­lice pros­e­cu­tor In­sp Wayne Mo­hammed in­di­cat­ed that ap­prox­i­mate­ly 25 wit­ness­es are ex­pect­ed to tes­ti­fy in the case.

He al­so not­ed that a State pros­e­cu­tor from the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) will be ap­point­ed to pros­e­cute the case once the in­ves­tiga­tive file is trans­ferred by homi­cide de­tec­tives over the next few weeks. 

Fields is ac­cused of at­tack­ing Fournil­li­er in front of her stu­dents at the school, lo­cat­ed along In­de­pen­dence Square in Port-of-Spain. Fields sur­ren­dered at the Besson Street Po­lice Sta­tion short­ly af­ter the in­ci­dent. 

He is be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Richard Clarke-Wills and Yves Nichol­son.