A man accused of leaving a gun and ammunition in his car after crashing his vehicle into a light pole last year while evading police told a Grand Court jury Monday that his vehicle had been stolen from a construction site at which he’d been working that day.
Javier Davis Howell, 33, denies one charge of possessing an illegal firearm and two charges of possessing ammunition, as well as a single charge of dangerous driving.
The court had heard earlier that Howell was arrested after visiting George Town police station several hours after a black Toyota Vitz, which he owned, had crashed into the pole after failing to stop at a police vehicle check point on South Sound Road on the morning of 23 April 2024.
The driver had fled the scene of the crash, leaving behind in the car a backpack that contained a Smith & Wesson pistol, a magazine loaded with three rounds of ammunition, and a Mason jar with four .45 calibre bullets inside a sock. Inside the glove compartment, police found Howell’s wallet, which contained his driving licence and his bank debit card.
The jury of four men and three women earlier had heard evidence that DNA belonging to Howell had been found on the car’s deployed air bag and on the gun.
Taking the stand on Monday, Howell, in response to questions from his attorney Lee Halliday-Davis, said he had been working as an electrician at a construction site in South Sound on the morning of the crash.
He told the jury he had not been feeling well, so after putting his tools in his car, he had taken a nap on a pile of bricks topped with plywood down a dirt track near the site. When he awoke, he said, he could not find his car.
A co-worker, whose name he said he did not know, later told him that he had seen a traffic chat group post that his car may have been involved in an accident. That worker gave Howell a ride to the scene of the crash, but there was no car when they got there, the defendant said, so they next went to Howell’s wife’s apartment in George Town.
As he had neither his keys nor his cellphone, Howell said, he waited outside the apartment. After his wife returned home, she told him his aunt had been trying to get in touch with him about the crash. His aunt picked him up and took him to the police station, where he was arrested, the court heard.
Prosecutor Kenneth Ferguson, in his cross examination, asked Howell why, when he was interviewed by police at that time, he had not told them that his car had been stolen. Instead, Ferguson noted, he had responded “no comment” to the questions posed to him by officers.
Howell said he had not answered police’s questions because that had been the advice given to him by his lawyer at that time.
Ferguson also pressed Howell on why he had not reported his car stolen, knowing that his tools and his wallet, which contained his bank card and photos of his baby son, were in the vehicle.
Howell responded, “It was not in my thought process at that time.”
The Crown counsel put to Howell that the real reason he had not reported the car stolen was because he had been the driver of the car and the owner of the gun and ammunition and that his evidence to the jury Monday morning was a “fabrication”. Howell denied this.
Ferguson said, even though the car was uninsured, the only reason someone would have run from the vehicle after the crash was because they knew it contained an illegal firearm with three live rounds and four other .45 calibre bullets.
The prosecutor told Howell that it was evident that he had been the driver when the car crashed “because we have your DNA profile over the airbag”, adding that swabs had been taken from the area of the airbag where the driver’s face would normally come into contact with it in the event of an accident.
“I understand,” Howell responded, “but I was not the person that crashed the vehicle.”
Howell finished giving his evidence late Monday morning.
The case continues.
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