Sto­ries DEREK ACHONG

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

The tri­al of a man, ac­cused of mur­der­ing a 16-year-old Laven­tille teenag­er out­side his trade school in 2013, came to a halt yes­ter­day, af­ter one of the State’s main wit­ness­es suf­fered a sus­pect­ed over­dose while wait­ing to con­tin­ue her tes­ti­mo­ny.

The in­ci­dent oc­curred yes­ter­day af­ter­noon dur­ing the sec­ond day of Chris­ton “Grimey Dog” Greaves’ judge-alone tri­al be­fore Jus­tice Lisa Ram­sumair-Hinds at the Hall of Jus­tice in Port-of-Spain.

When the woman took the wit­ness stand, she re­peat­ed­ly ex­pressed reser­va­tions over par­tic­i­pat­ing in the case, as she claimed that at the time she im­pli­cat­ed Greaves she was suf­fer­ing men­tal health is­sues and was con­tem­plat­ing end­ing her own life.

She claimed that she did not re­mem­ber talk­ing to the po­lice or sign­ing state­ments at­trib­uted to her.

“When the whole thing was go­ing on I was in a dark place. I can’t re­mem­ber read­ing any­thing to sign any­thing,” the wit­ness said.

Jus­tice Ram­sumair-Hinds raised con­cerns over the wit­ness’ cur­rent men­tal state, as she not­ed that she was rock­ing back and forth and cov­er­ing her ears with her hands while be­ing ques­tioned by state pros­e­cu­tor Char­maine Samuel.

“There are tears stream­ing down her face,” Jus­tice Ram­sumair-Hinds said.

“It is not me be­ing an alarmist. I can­not say if it is re­al or con­trived but there seems to be a risk of self harm,” the judge added.

Samuel sought to ap­ply to deem her a hos­tile wit­ness so that her state­ments giv­en to the po­lice and her tes­ti­mo­ny dur­ing the pre­lim­i­nary in­quiry of the case could be con­sid­ered.

While Samuel was ques­tion­ing two po­lice of­fi­cers who record­ed state­ments from the woman in her ab­sence, Jus­tice Ram­sumair-Hinds re­ceived a mes­sage about an in­ci­dent in the wit­ness wait­ing room.

“She took some­thing and now she is throw­ing up on the floor. I have grave con­cerns that this wit­ness is in need of treat­ment from a psy­chi­atric fa­cil­i­ty,” the judge said.

While await­ing the ar­rival of para­medics, Jus­tice Ram­sumair-Hinds made an or­der un­der the Men­tal Health Act for the wit­ness to be tak­en to the St Ann’s Psy­chi­atric Hos­pi­tal af­ter be­ing sta­bilised.

“I wish to pro­tect this court and its func­tions. I do not want to see this wit­ness harm her­self,” she said.

“I am not say­ing she is men­tal­ly ill or suf­fers from a men­tal in­ca­pac­i­ty, I am not qual­i­fied to do so,” she added.

The case was ad­journed to next Tues­day.

Greaves is ac­cused of mur­der­ing 16-year-old Kaz­im Max­ine on Au­gust 27, 2013.

Max­ine, of East­ern Quar­ry, Laven­tille, was leav­ing the Laven­tille Tech­nol­o­gy and Con­tin­u­ing Ed­u­ca­tion Cen­tre af­ter his first day of school when he was ap­proached by two gun­men, who shot him sev­er­al times.

The un­con­test­ed ev­i­dence of a dozen wit­ness­es was ten­dered in­to ev­i­dence be­fore the woman was called up­on to tes­ti­fy.

Greaves is rep­re­sent­ed by Wayne Sturge and Danielle Ram­per­sad. Gillana Guy ap­peared along­side Samuel for the State.