An illegal beach vendor was slashed with a knife several times in front of tourists during a dispute over vending territory on Seven Mile Beach on 19 April 2023, a Grand Court judge has heard.
Marco Green, a Jamaican national, suffered wounds to his head, lower back and arm in the attack, which the Crown prosecution says occurred because of a “turf dispute” over who operates along certain sections of Public Beach on Seven Mile.
Romell Millwood, who faces a charge of wounding with intent, denies stabbing and slashing Green, saying he was working at a neighbour’s yard that day.
He appeared before Justice Emma Peters in the Grand Court on Tuesday, 26 Aug., in a judge-alone trial.
Green, speaking via video link from Jamaica, told the court that he was “one million percent” certain that the man who attacked him and left him requiring stitches to his cheek, head, arm and back was Millwood.
‘Hustling on the beach’
Green, who had lived in Cayman for 22 years before moving back to Jamaica in 2024, said, on the morning of the attack, he had been “hustling on the beach”, working with a friend selling beverages and jerk chicken to tourists.
Responding to questions by Crown prosecutor Ben Brown, Green said he and his friend had been operating out of a cabana on the southern part of the beach. He admitted he had been working illegally and acknowledged that he had already received a warning from authorities over his beach vending activities.
He said a tourist had bought a drink from him and told him his money was at his beach chair, which was further north along the beach, toward cabanas nearer the volleyball court. When Green went with the tourist to his chair to collect the money, he said, he was approached by Millwood, who took his cooler bag from him and told him Jamaicans shouldn’t be operating on that part of the beach.
“I told him that was the first time I’d heard that,” Green said. “I told him I don’t want no trouble,” and Millwood gave him back the bag.
Then, the wife of the tourist to whom he’d sold the juice also asked for a drink and he went to get her one from his bag. At that point, Green said, Millwood started yelling, grabbed the bag and threw it in the sea, telling Green he would get “a gunshot” in his face.
“I told him I was just about peace and about selling my goods,” Green said.
He turned back to get paid by the tourists who’d bought the drinks, and “that’s when I feel the first stab in my back”.
Injured with 6-inch blade
When he turned around, he said, he saw his attacker wielding a 12-inch folding “camouflage” knife with a 6-inch blade, with which he was slashed across his left shoulder, upper arm, left cheek and his temple, over his left ear.
Green told the court he ran into the sea to get away from the assault and was chased by Millwood for a while. Bleeding and feeling weak, he said, he then ran back to his friend at the cabana and asked him to drive him to hospital.
He told Brown that there had been a lot of tourists and several other vendors on the beach, but “no one tried to stop anything”.
After he was treated and released from hospital, he later picked Millwood out of a line-up of photographs shown to him by police. He said he had recognised Millwood, as he knew him from West Bay, the district in which they both lived, and from working on the beach.
His friend, whose police statement was read out in court, said Green had told him after they left the hospital that day that Millwood was the attacker.
Warned to keep to their side of beach
The friend also told police that when he and Green arrived at the beach with their goods that morning, a Caymanian vendor he knew as ‘Thurston’ said they shouldn’t be taking money, should stay on the left side of the beach, and that he was going “to make an example today”. He said about a week before the attack, Millwood had also told him he was going to “set an example”.
Defence attorney Crister Brady, who cross-examined Green, put to him that he was not just selling water, juices, sodas and jerk chicken on the beach, but that he was also selling ganja to the tourists. Green denied this.
He noted that Green had returned to work on the beach repeatedly, “even after you were warned not to”.
“There was a bit of a turf war taking place on the beach between yourself and others about where you could sell, would that be right?” he asked Green.
“No,” Green replied, “that’s totally wrong.”
Brady intimated that the reason he had identified Millwood as his attacker was because Millwood was the only person among the other sellers whose name he knew.
He questioned why Green, either when he first got back to the cabana or on the journey to the hospital, had not told his friend the name of the attacker, if he had known it. Green responded that he was in much pain and had been slipping in and out of consciousness at the time.
He told Brady, “I know who stabbed me. It’s Romell Millwood, okay? … 19 April 2023, that’s a day I will never forget in my entire life.”
Defendant says he has alibi
Millwood, who is in custody, repeatedly insisted in his evidence that he was not on the beach on 19 April, and had never seen or met Green before. He said the first he had heard of the attack on the beach was later that day via social media.
He said he had not been to Public Beach since 2019 and was not there the morning in question, denying that he sold items on the beach.
He found out he was going to be arrested when lawyer John Furness contacted him and said he was required to go to West Bay Police Station. He said the lawyer, who was not with him while he was being interviewed, had advised him to make no comment during questioning.
That’s why, he said, he had not told police that he had an alibi doing landscaping and other yard work for a neighbour.
During cross-examination by Brown, Millwood admitted he had a number of previous convictions for violence and possession of weapons, including num-chuks and brass knuckles.
Justice Peters said she would deliver her verdict on Thursday morning, 28 Aug.
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