A police officer accused of murdering a man from Laventille over a decade ago, has maintained that he was acting in self-defence.
PC Anthony Sylvester repeatedly made the claim as he took the witness stand in his virtual judge-alone trial before Justice Hayden St Clair-Douglas yesterday morning.
Sylvester is on trial for murdering Sheldon Des Vignes at his St Barb’s Road, Laventille home on November 9, 2007.
Prosecutors claim that Sylvester and his colleagues were chasing a man through an alley, which bounded Des Vignes’ home, when Sylvester shot at the man and wounded Des Vignes, who was liming with relatives in a shed in his yard.
Sylvester is being prosecuted under the legal principle of transferred malice, whereby a person is held responsible when their intention to harm one person inadvertently causes a second person to be hurt instead.
Testifying yesterday, Sylvester claimed that he and his colleagues had responded to a report of a group of armed men wearing camouflage clothing near Des Vignes’ home.
Sylvester claimed that the men ran away upon seeing them and they chased after one into the alley.
Sylvester claimed that while chasing after the man, he saw Des Vignes point a gun at him. He claimed that he shouted at Des Vignes to drop the weapon and shot him twice when he refused to comply.
“My life was under immediate threat. I could not wait. My training is recognising a threat and stopping it,” Sylvester said.
While being cross-examined by prosecutor Indira Chinebas, Sylvester repeatedly denied assaulting Des Vignes’ neighbour before chasing him through the alley.
“If I slapped anyone they would go down and won’t be able to recover. That is a fact,” Sylvester said.
He also denied that Des Vignes’ relatives were in his yard and witnessed the shooting, as they claimed in the trial.
“If there was someone else I am quite sure they would have been hit with a bullet,” Sylvester said.
Confronted with inconsistencies between his initial report to his supervisor at the Inter-Agency Task Force (IATF) and his eventual interview with homicide detectives, Sylvester claimed that he had pointed out the inaccuracies but they were not corrected.
Sylvester’s colleague, PC Junior Nesbitt, who responded to the report with Sylvester and two other colleagues, sought to corroborate Sylvester’s claims.
Nesbitt claimed that he, Sylvester and another colleague began chasing after the man but he returned to join their colleague, who was guarding the police vehicle.
“I heard PC Sylvester shout in a loud tone ‘Put down the gun’ and then heard two loud explosions,” Nesbitt said.
He claimed that he then saw Sylvester and their colleague bringing a wounded man to the vehicle and placing him in the tray.
Nesbitt claimed that the vehicle was surrounded by residents, who wanted to prevent them from taking the man to hospital.
“I heard two loud explosions and I saw the crowd quickly disperse,” Nesbitt said.
While being cross-examined by Chinebas, Nesbitt was quizzed on why he did not include Sylvester’s alleged plea for a gun to be dropped in his initial statement to police.
Nesbitt claimed that he did not think it necessary to include it in the preliminary report.
He also claimed that he was sure that the person making the statement was Sylvester, as he was familiar with his voice, they having worked together for several years.
Asked whether he saw Sylvester collecting a firearm near Des Vignes’ body, Nesbitt said he heard about the firearm but did not see it being collected.
The trial is expected to resume tomorrow, when another defence witness is scheduled to testify.
After the witnesses completes their evidence, prosecutors and defence attorneys will identify the legal issues to be determined by Justice St Clair-Douglas and present their closing addresses.
Justice St Clair-Douglas will then consider the evidence in the case and determine Sylvester’s innocence or guilt.
