The ex-husband of a woman who claimed he pointed a firearm at her and sent her videos of him posing on her rooftop in Bodden Town with a gun told a Grand Court jury Wednesday that the footage of him had been shot a decade ago on the roof of his uncle’s home in Jamaica.
Cory Shamar Pusey, 34, also denied pointing a gun at his ex-wife when he called to her house one night in April 2022, and insisted he had no access to firearms in Cayman.
Pusey, who is charged with one count of possession of an imitation firearm, which he denies, took the stand on Wednesday before Justice Cheryll Richards and a jury of five women and two men.
Responding to questions about his familiarity with firearms, Pusey claimed that he was “experienced” based on his relationship with his Jamaica-based uncle, a police officer who had a couple of weapons in his home, including a BB gun.
Pusey said he visited his uncle regularly when he was attending boarding school between 2004 and 2008, and again while he was in Jamaica between 2010 and 2014, but could not say exactly when the videos were shot.
He told the court that the videos that had been played to the jury of him waving a gun on a rooftop had been recorded on his cousin’s phone on top of his uncle’s house in Montego Bay, sometime between 2010 and 2014, and that the weapon was a BB gun.
His wife had claimed the videos were shot on the roof of her home in Bodden Town, and that the buildings in the background were her neighbours’ houses.
Confrontation
Pusey’s defence lawyer Clayton Phuran asked his client to describe an 8 July 2023 confrontation at his ex-wife’s home.
Pusey said he had called her on the evening of 7 July, wishing to discuss his relationship with their four children. He said he told her he was coming to her house to continue their discussion.
He said he arrived around 3am on 8 July and was met by the woman and her boyfriend. He told the court that his ex-wife was on the phone to the police at the time and he remained in his car.
Then, he said, the boyfriend came to his car window and started hitting him. Pusey claimed he attempted to drive away, but his car stalled, so he found a spray can in his car and hit the boyfriend on the forehead with it before successfully driving off.
However, Pusey said, he was then stopped by four police officers. They reportedly attempted to handcuff him, but he refused, believing he had done nothing wrong. They physically restrained him, and Pusey went to the hospital with injuries he said occurred during his arrest.
It was following this incident that Pusey’s ex-wife told police that he had pulled a gun on her more than a year earlier – in April 2022 – and she sent two videos, via phone, to one of the police officers, which she said showed Pusey on her rooftop waving a gun.
On Monday, she had testified that her phone, on which she says she had been sent the videos by her ex-husband, had been destroyed after she dropped it and she wasn’t able to get it repaired.
Access to firearms
In his police interview following his arrest, Pusey had stated, in response to questions from officers, that he had no access to firearms. On the stand on Wednesday, under cross-examination from Crown prosecutor Shauna-Kaye James, he said he had meant that he had no access to guns in Cayman and had never handled a gun here.
When asked about the video images on him on the rooftop with a gun, he had told police in his interview that he did not recall the videos. He told James, during cross-examination, that the reason he’d answered the police in this way was because he did not have the videos himself, because they had been recorded on his cousin’s phone.
He added that he had been in so much pain at the time, following the incident at his ex-wife’s house, that he was unable to concentrate on his answers to police.
Pusey also told the court that his hair is much shorter now that it had been in the videos, indicating that they had been filmed years ago. He said he had worn his hair long during his time in Jamaica, though it was pulled back and tied at the back of his head in the videos.
He claimed he had never sent the videos to anyone, and the only person with access to his phone password was his ex-wife.
The court had heard earlier that a police digital examiner had not been able to pinpoint the time, date and location of the original rooftop videos without extensive forensic investigation.
Phuran enquired about the earlier April 2022 incident upon which the charge against Pusey is based.
Pusey said he and his wife, from whom he was separated at the time, were co-parenting and “trying to get back together”.
He denied that he had pulled a gun on his wife, saying it never happened.
The trial continues.
Additional reporting by Dana Kampa.
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