Af­ter spend­ing al­most 15 years on re­mand and fac­ing two tri­als, two friends from Point Fortin have been freed of mur­der­ing a fel­low res­i­dent in 2007.

De­liv­er­ing ver­dicts at the end of their vir­tu­al judge-alone tri­al, yes­ter­day, High Court Judge Gail Gon­za­les found Dirk Bruno and Shel­don Hen­ry, of New Vil­lage, Point Fortin, not guilty of mur­der­ing Rasheed Goodridge.

Ac­cord­ing to the ev­i­dence pre­sent­ed in the case, on May 22, 2007, Goodridge, 21, and his 23-year-old friend Gabriel Charles, were stand­ing near a bam­boo patch at La For­tune Road in Point Fortin when they were al­leged­ly ap­proached by two men, who want­ed to pur­chase mar­i­jua­na.

Af­ter Goodridge left the lo­ca­tion and re­turned the mar­i­jua­na, the two men drew guns and shot him and Charles sev­er­al times.

Goodridge, a stu­dent of the Ser­vol Life Cen­tre in La Ro­main, died on the scene, while Charles, who was shot in his head, sur­vived.

Af­ter be­ing dis­charged from hos­pi­tal, Charles iden­ti­fied Bruno and Hen­ry as their at­tack­ers.

Charles, of War­den Road, Point Fortin, ini­tial­ly moved to Port-of-Spain but re­turned to the com­mu­ni­ty in Ju­ly 2008 to tes­ti­fy in the duo’s pre­lim­i­nary in­quiry.

On Ju­ly 28, 2008, Charles was sit­ting un­der a tree near his home when he and his friend Rod­ney Per­sad were ap­proached by a gun­man, who shot them sev­er­al times.

Charles died and Per­sad, who was shot in his back, sur­vived.

Charles’ wit­ness state­ment giv­en to po­lice was used as ev­i­dence in the in­quiry and at the duo’s even­tu­al tri­als.

In April 2015, the duo was freed as High Court Judge Hay­den St Clair-Dou­glas up­held a no-case sub­mis­sion at the end of their first tri­al.

Jus­tice St Clair-Dou­glas ruled that he came to the “in­escapable con­clu­sion” that Charles’ iden­ti­fi­ca­tion ev­i­dence was poor.

The Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) suc­cess­ful­ly ap­pealed the de­ci­sion and the Court of Ap­peal or­dered a re­tri­al.

In her rul­ing in the case, Jus­tice Gon­za­les al­so stat­ed that she did not be­lieve Charles’ ver­sion of the events.

Bruno and Hen­ry were rep­re­sent­ed by Lar­ry Williams, Maris­sa Bubb, Pe­ter Carter and Pe­rusha Lord.