West Bay resident Grewvan Elvis Ebanks has been found not guilty of stabbing his former partner’s boyfriend during a New Year’s Day altercation.
Ebanks was accused of either wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm, or a lesser charge of wounding. If found guilty of wounding with intent, he would have faced a possible life sentence.
The seven-strong jury who had listened to evidence in the Grand Court trial presided over by Justice Marlene Carter, believed fisherman Ebanks’ version of events over key prosecution witness Thorston Smith, taking just over three hours to unanimously find Ebanks not guilty of either charge.
Ebanks thanked the judge and jury after the verdicts were declared, telling the Compass afterwards that he felt “relieved” and “much better” after the week-long trial.
On the opening day of the trial, Smith, 34, testified that he had been lying in bed with his then girlfriend and her 3-year-old daughter when Ebanks arrived at her West Bay apartment on 1 Jan. 2023. 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.
Testifying in his defence on Tuesday, however, Ebanks said that he had gone round to his former partner’s house in West Bay at around 8am on New Year’s Day last year to see his young daughter who he hadn’t seen since before Christmas.
Self-defence
He told the court that he never carried a knife, had not brought a knife to the house, and that he had acted in self-defence when Smith had attacked him. He told the court, “I was trying to get away,” adding, “Had he not pulled a knife, I would not have injured him.”
Ebanks’ former partner and current partner also gave evidence in the trial as did police officers, some of whom came under intense questioning from defence lawyer Amelia Fosuhene who questioned why photographs had not been taken of injuries sustained by Ebanks during the fracas.
Dismissing the jury after the trial, Justice Carter thanked them for their hard work and for “understanding the seriousness of what we do in court”.
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