The trial of Grewvan Elvis Ebanks, accused of a violent stabbing, opened in the Grand Court Tuesday with a seven-strong jury hearing testimony from the prosecution’s first witness, alleged victim Thorston Smith.
Ebanks is charged with alternate counts of either ‘wounding or causing grievous bodily harm with intent’ or ‘wounding or causing grievous bodily harm’. The first, more serious charge comes with a maximum penalty of life imprisonment.
Acting for the Crown, attorney Andre Wedderburn told the jury that the prosecution’s case was that Ebanks attacked Smith with a knife on New Year’s Day in 2023.
Taking to the witness stand, Smith, 34, told the court that he had become acquainted with Ebanks through motorcycling. On 1 Jan. 2023, according to Smith’s testimony, he had been lying in bed with his girlfriend and her three-year-old daughter when Ebanks arrived at her West Bay apartment. Hearing knocking, his girlfriend opened the front door to Ebanks, who, according to Smith, rushed at him with a five-inch knife, calling him an expletive and shouting, “I’m going to kill you.”
In the ensuing fight, Smith said he was stabbed in the back of the neck and the palm of his left hand, and that he also stabbed Ebanks in self-defence. Smith said he also bit Ebanks in the chest.
Nappy used to stop blood loss
Smith said that once he had managed to wrestle the knife from Ebanks, he drove himself, his girlfriend and her daughter to hospital.
“I was bleeding a lot,” he said, adding that his girlfriend had staunched the blood loss with a nappy.
Smith said he was given stitches in his back and hand as well as pain-relief medication.
At the start of cross-examination by defending lawyer Amelia Fosuhene, Smith admitted to having a police record and said he had shared this information with his girlfriend before the events in January 2023.
The trial in front of Justice Marlene Carter is expected to last for several days.
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