Aerial footage recorded by police helicopter provided a jury with a bird’s-eye view of half a dozen people gathered around a dying man on the ground after he was shot in broad daylight.
In the background of the video, a woman could be heard making a frantic call for help to a 911 dispatcher.
This was the curtain raiser of the murder trial of Javon James Dixon, who is accused of killing Jovin Omar Fuentes.
Dixon denies the charges.
“This video is but a snippet of the final moments of the life of Jovin Omar Fuentes, 34 years old and a father of two young children,” said Candia James-Malcolm, the deputy director of public prosecutions and lead counsel in the case.
As the trial began on Tuesday, James-Malcolm told the jury of five men and seven women that on 1 July 2022 at around 5:30pm Dixon murdered Fuentes over an unpaid $175 car-rental fee that the deceased owed him.
Taking the stand as the prosecution’s first witness, Fuentes’ aunt told the court that minutes before the shooting, her nephew had stopped at a convenience store along Shamrock Road in Bodden Town in the vicinity of Gun Square.
CCTV footage from the convenience store shows a silver Honda Accord with dark-tinted windows slow down near Fuentes’ vehicle. According to the prosecution, Dixon, who was driving the car, got out holding a small black gun and began to argue with Fuentes.
“When he got out of the car, I could see his full front and side… with an unobstructed view, and he was alone with a small black gun,” she said.
She added that her brother had then tried to intercede and struggled with Dixon; the gun went off before he “told Javon to stop and put it away”.
Fuentes’ aunt told the court that Dixon agreed but, as he was walking away, he turned and shot the deceased in the chest, piercing his heart, lungs and other internal organs.
After the shooting, Dixon then drove off but was arrested two hours later while on his way to the police station to turn himself in.
The murder weapon was never recovered.
‘A friend did it’
James-Malcolm told the court that two days after being arrested and in the presence of his attorney, Dixon told officers he was there, and he argued with the deceased but claimed he never pulled the trigger.
“He told officers that earlier that day he gave a ride to a friend who he only knows as ‘Blacks’, a tall, dark Jamaican who works in construction,” James-Malcolm told the jury.
“According to the defendant, while arguing with Fuentes, Blacks shot and killed him, and so he panicked, got in the car and drove off.”
According to James-Malcolm, video recordings tracing the defendant’s movements earlier that day all contradict Dixon’s version of events.
Dixon faces a single count of murder, which he denies.
The trial is expected to last three weeks and he has been remanded into custody.
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