No one other than Devon Emmanuel Wright could have killed 2-year-old Alissady Powell, a jury was told on Thursday.
Prosecutor Jonas Hankin, KC, told a Grand Court jury that any suggestion that the toddler was killed by her mother Yvané Dixon-Powell, who had refused to accept an initial cause of death as drowning, did not stand up to examination.
He said, “The child’s mother did not do that, and her actions demonstrate that if it wasn’t for her, we wouldn’t be here.”
Hankin highlighted that Dixon-Powell had engaged a US forensics expert, at her own expense, to carry out an examination of Alissady’s body, who said that the child had died because her neck had been compressed.
He said her actions had led to a re-examination of the case by a UK Home Office specialist team, which had led to Wright being charged with abduction and murder in 2024.
Alissady’s body was found on ironshore near the Cayman Brac apartment shared by her mother, Wright and Wright’s cousin, Shantel McLean, who was living there temporarily, on the morning of July 26, 2022.
Her mother has said the child was safe and well when she checked on her and changed her diaper in the early hours of the day the child died.
Hankin said, “You will hear evidence, we will say, that is capable of satisfying you so you are sure that Alissady was not abducted, in the sense that she was not taken from the apartment by an unknown party.”
He emphasised that there were no signs of a forced entry at the apartment and that all the evidence suggested that Alissady did not wake up and leave the apartment herself.
Hankin said there had been no signs or sounds of a break-in or evidence of a struggle.
He added that all the evidence indicated that McLean had been asleep on a sofa in a living area that night, and that Dixon-Powell and Wright’s bedroom window was ajar, but they had been sleeping in the room.
He added, “If someone had tried to break in there, they would have been met by Yvané and Mr. Wright.”
Hankin said the idea that Alissady had “wandered unaccompanied from the apartment, leaving behind her most treasured possessions, and without her mother and, in doing so, encountered a child killer who happened to be close by. … The prosecution says simply neither proposition is feasible.”
Hankin added that Alissady was “very attached to her mother and had “separation issues”.
He said, “If she had awoken, she would have, in all likelihood, have gone to her mother. She would never have left her belongings behind – her blanket, her doll and her bottle.”
Hankin pointed out that Alissady was in a nightdress and barefoot when discovered on the ironshore, but her feet showed no signs of travel over rough ground.
“There was no realistic prospect of Alissady getting out the door of the house, down to the ironshore and into the sea,” he said.
Hankin added that a Ring doorbell, equipped with a video camera, had been removed from the apartment next to Alissady’s home and was found on the ironshore after her body was discovered.
He told the jury the Crown’s argument was that the Ring doorbell had been removed by Wright to cover his tracks as he took Alissady away.
Hankin said, “There is no point in removing the Ring doorbell … if she did not pass within its purview.”
He claimed that statements given by Wright that Alissady could open the apartment door by herself and, after his arrest, that police should be “looking at her mother”, despite an earlier statement that she was a good mother, should be considered.
Hankin said, “What we are looking at is a man seeking to direct attention away from himself; first towards the child … and then towards her mother.”
The trial, before Justice Emma Peters, continues.
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