A man jailed for seven years last week for possessing an unlicensed firearm claimed he got the gun because he feared reprisals after being arrested on suspicion of being involved in the West Bay football stadium mass shooting in February 2024.
In legal arguments leading up to Jordan Neil Ebanks’ sentencing on Friday, 24 Oct., after he had earlier pleaded guilty to unlawfully possessing the weapon, the court heard that he had believed he had a “target on his back” following his arrest last year.
West Bay stadium shooting arrests
Ebanks, 25, had been one of four men arrested during the police investigation into the 25 Feb. 2024 shooting at the Ed Bush Football Stadium, in which seven people were injured. None of the four were subsequently charged.
Prosecutor Kenneth Ferguson pointed out to Justice Cheryll Richards at the sentencing hearing that there was no evidence that the defendant’s name had been published following his arrest.
Ferguson said if the court were to accept Ebanks’ account as an exceptional circumstance when determining an appropriate sentence, “it will stretch the boundaries of what constitutes an exceptional circumstance on all authorities … and will open a Pandora’s box for almost every defendant who’s been held because of an unlicensed firearm to come before this court to say they had the firearm because [they] were threatened”.
Defence attorney Amelia Fosuhene told Richards that just because her client’s name had not been published in the media, that did not mean that individuals in West Bay did not know who had been arrested.
“The reality was, when the police turned up, mob-handed, and arrested my client rather vocally and verbally for what was a shooting at the stadium, it did not need the press to publish in West Bay that he was arrested for that; the police had already done that in the way he was arrested,” she said.
She added, “It doesn’t matter that it wasn’t printed. What matters is what happened when he was arrested. What matters is the fact that it was done in a very public way and, thereafter, the police advertising that they were sure that they had the suspect in custody for the shooting.
“So, it didn’t take an article to put a target on his back. The whole process did that.”
She told the judge that while she was not saying this was intentional and that the police were trying to “present some confidence to the public that they were doing something about an incident that had happened, it is telling that my client has never been charged for that incident.”
To date, no one has been charged with the shooting.
Gun thrown from car during police chase
Outlining the details of the case as she delivered the sentence, Richards noted that Ebanks had been arrested, along with another man, on 21 April last year, after the car in which he was travelling was subject to a police pursuit, during which officers saw an item being thrown from the front-passenger window. A 9mm Lugar Taurus was later recovered from the roadside.
The vehicle travelled through numerous roadblocks in West Bay before police forced the car to stop. During a search of the car, police found two 9mm bullets and a magazine with seven 9mm bullets inside.
Ebanks was charged with three firearms-related offences over the possession of the weapon, the magazine and the ammunition. He entered a not-guilty plea when he first appeared before the Grand Court last year, but subsequently pleaded guilty to the charges in June this year.
A forensic examination of the gun revealed Ebanks’ DNA on the weapon.
Richards said during his police interview, Ebanks had provided a prepared statement via his lawyer, in which he said there had been three people in the vehicle and he had been afraid to say who the third person was. He said he feared his life would be at risk if he spoke to police and therefore was exercising his right to silence.
As mitigating factors, Richards considered Ebanks’ young age, his lack of previous convictions, and his eventual guilty plea, but did not consider those to be exceptional circumstances that would impact the imposition of the mandatory minimum sentence of seven years in prison.
Judge: Self-defence not exceptional circumstance for gun possession
She also did not accept as a mitigating exceptional circumstance the argument that it had become known in West Bay that he had been arrested as a suspect in the stadium shooting and therefore feared for his life as there were those “who wished to take revenge.” The judge noted that Ebanks’ counsel had said the defendant had given in to peer pressure and had gotten a gun for self-defence, as he did not trust police to protect him.
She cited an earlier ruling by the late Justice Charles Quin in which he wrote: “In the Cayman Islands, the possession of an unlicensed firearm for the purpose of self-defence or the defence of others cannot amount to an exceptional circumstance … to result in a sentence lower than the mandatory minimum years of imprisonment. If the courts were to decide otherwise, such a decision would inevitably lead to further breakdown in law and order.”
She sentenced Ebanks to the mandatory minimum of seven years in jail for possession of the unlicensed gun; four and a half years for possessing the loaded magazine; and 33 months for possession of bullets, with all three sentences to run concurrently, for a total of seven years, with time served to be deducted.
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