Crown closes case with two civilian witnesses and police
When Tyrone Burrell was fatally shot on the evening of 8 September 2010, there were between 10 and 20 people present, Detective Inspector Lauriston Burton told Justice Charles Quin on Monday afternoon. He said some of those present were from George Town and some were from the Birch Tree Hill area of West Bay.
Mr. Burton was the last witness before Senior Crown Counsel Trevor Ward closed the case for the Prosecution against Leonard Antonio Ebanks, who is charged with murder.
The body of Mr. Burrell, 20, was found in a yard on Birch Tree Hill Road. Justice Quin asked Mr. Burton who it was who had told him there were 10 to 20 people present. The officer indicated that the count came from witness statements, anonymous information and inquiries.
The judge asked what time frame he was working from and Mr. Burton said specifically around the time of the incident. He added that reference to the yard included the roadway.
Only two civilians gave evidence in the trial that started on 6 September. One was Arlene White, a domestic helper who said she was in the kitchen of her employer’s house when she saw Ebanks pass the door and then she heard a gunshot about five seconds later.
She also told the court that, two days after the shooting, Ebanks told her he had killed Mr. Burrell (Caymanian Compass, 8 September).
The second civilian, Nora Ebanks, was in another yard. She said she heard a noise, but she didn’t know if it was fireworks or a gunshot and then, about 10 seconds later, she saw Ebanks. He had come from the path between the two yards (Compass, 16 September).
The only other witnesses to give evidence were police officers.
Ebanks, who also resided on Birch Tree Hill Road, about 100 yards from the murder scene, spoke with police after the shooting and gave three interviews. They were read into the record last week.
He said he was at the yard earlier in the day of the shooting, but left and walked to a nearby yard where he intended to ask someone for money. That was where he had met Miss Nora and she wouldn’t leave, so he did not want to ask her brother for money in front of her. Instead, he said, he went home and had a shower with his wife. While they were bathing, they heard a popping sound.
He got dressed and headed back to an ongoing session in the yard he had been in earlier. On the way he was met by two people who told him that someone got shot in the head. The session, he explained, had been ongoing from the weekend. There was no special reason for it — just “a vibe-building thing… drinking, smoking, feeling good.”
He denied having anything to do with Mr. Burrell’s death or knowing who killed him. He said he had no animosity toward the man. He denied being in any gang: “I got no war with nobody — I’m all over the place,” Ebanks said. He suggested that a Jamaican had a hit out for Mr. Burrell because he and Damion Ming (who was fatally shot in March 2010 in the same yard) had stolen his cocaine.
Scenes of crime officer Ewart Mitchell submitted photographs he had taken at the scene. He confirmed there was blood spatter on an outside wall of the house near where Mr. Burrell’s body was found. He said police searched the yard that night and again in the morning with metal detectors, but did not find any bullet casing.
Mr. Burrell was shot in the head, with the path of the projectile going from back to front in an upward direction. The projectile was .38, hollow point.
The Crown and Defence team agreed on certain facts read into the record. No DNA or blood was found on any of the items of clothing seized from the defendant. No fingerprints evidence of any significance was recovered from the scene.
Mr. Burrell’s mother said she had dropped him at a friend’s house on Hell Road around 1pm on the day he was killed.
On Tuesday morning, Defence Attorney Martin Heslop was scheduled to continue his submission that the evidence was such that there was no case for Ebanks to answer.
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