Eric Brian Williams-Soto, who admitted taking part in a robbery of a gambling shop that went fatally wrong, told the court Thursday that he had no idea his co-defendant had been armed when they went to carry out the crime.
Williams-Soto, 22, told a Grand Court jury on the fifth day of the trial into the murder of retired prison officer Harry Elliott Jr., that he and Justin Kyle Jackson, 25, had carried out the robbery on the suggestion of Cain Thomas, a man he claimed he had never met before the day of the attempted hold-up.
Williams-Soto and Jackson are jointly charged with murder and possession of an illegal weapon.
Elliott was shot in the head at close range on the night of 25 April 2022, after the two men entered the building in School Road, George Town, intending to rob the numbers shop.
Jackson has been identified as the shooter – a fact accepted by both the prosecution and the defence. Jackson’s lawyer, Sallie Bennett-Jenkins, KC, had earlier informed the court that her client would not be taking the stand to give evidence in his defence.
Williams-Soto explained under questioning by his lawyer Charles Miskin, KC, that on the day of Elliott was killed, Jackson – with whom he had been friends for three years – had called to ask him if he wanted to drive to West Bay, where Williams-Soto’s grandmother lived. When Jackson arrived at his home, he was in a green Honda CRV driven by Thomas.
Williams-Soto said he packed a bag of clothes – his working clothes and sleeping clothes – as he’d intended to stay overnight at his grandmother’s house in West Bay.
The court heard that the car never made it to West Bay. Instead, the trio drove around George Town for almost three hours, including a number of times past the numbers shop on School Road.
Williams-Soto said Thomas had asked him and Jackson to help him with a robbery, adding that Thomas gave him a hoodie and a ski-mask to hide his identity.
Describing the events that led up to the shooting, Williams-Soto said he and Jackson entered the small lobby of the building, and Jackson first tried the door of a barbershop on the right, before pressing what he thought was a doorbell on the numbers shop door on the left – to the numbers shop. The court had earlier heard from the gambling shop owner that the button did not operate as a doorbell or buzzer.
“About two seconds later,” Williams-Soto said, “he (Jackson) pulled the door open. As he was walking through, he said, ‘You know what time it is? This is robbery.’ Mr. Harry Elliott, who had his back turned, was standing, I’d say, about four feet away from the door. He turns around and rushes towards us.
“Justin started stepping back very fast, pushing me back into the passageway and that is when I heard a loud bang.”
As he was still outside the door, behind Jackson, he said, he could not see what had happened inside the room. After the shot was fired, he took off running, he told Miskin.
“After we got back in the car, I remember Justin telling Cain that he think he shot someone and Cain started cussing at him. The first thing he asked was for his gun back,” he said.
Under cross-examination by Jackson’s counsel, Bennett-Jenkins, Williams-Soto denied knowing that Thomas had given Jackson a gun, or that he was armed when they entered the building.
After the shooting, the two men fled the scene, and Thomas picked them up in his car. Williams-Soto said when they got back in the vehicle, Jackson said he thought he’d killed someone, and Thomas asked for his gun back.
When they drove to Thomas’s home, Thomas told him to wipe down the car and to change his clothes and drop the clothing he’d been wearing at a garbage bin on the road.
Williams-Soto said he then called his mother to pick him up.
Bennett-Jenkins put to him that there had been a fourth man in the car that evening, before the robbery, and that this man –whom she did not name but whom she said Wiliams-Soto was frightened of – and Thomas, had threatened him and Jackson into carrying out the robbery.
Williams-Soto insisted that there was no fourth man in the vehicle and that Thomas had not threatened him and Jackson.
Asked what was discussed in the car for the two and three-quarters hours that they had driven around, he said they had mostly listened to music and had not talked much. The issue of the robbery had only come up in the half-hour or so before it had happened.
“Let me understand this,” Bennett-Jenkins said. “There were no threats. There was this musical event in the car, a gentle suggestion to do a robbery, and you just decide ‘this is a great idea’? Is that what you want the jury to believe?”
Williams-Soto replied that he had been looking for extra cash. He told the court he had been earning $400 a week as a pool maintenance worker and wanted some more money to buy clothes and shoes.
Bennett-Jenkins suggested Thomas had told the two men that the robbery would not be reported, as numbers games are illegal in Cayman and the owner would not go to the police.
In her cross-examination of the defendant, prosecutor Candia James-Malcolm challenged Williams-Soto’s contention that Elliott had “rushed” Jackson, saying it was clear from the position of his body after the fatal shooting that he was inside the numbers shop, and not at the doorway.
Williams-Soto said it had seemed to him that Elliott had been trying to “tackle” Jackson.
Addressing Williams-Soto’s claim that he did not know Jackson was armed, James-Malcolm asked how he had expected to hold up a business if neither of them had been carrying a weapon.
Williams-Soto responded that he had been “expecting to go in there and make a little bit of noise” and get cash, “and if not, leave empty-handed”.
The defence closed its case late on Thursday afternoon. The case is due to resume Friday with some legal discussion, and the jury is expected to return to hear closing arguments on Monday.
Both men, who deny the charges, are remanded in custody.
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