Conductor tells court of witnessing best friend stabbed

Public service vehicle (PSV) conductor Chadwick Lowe told a jury on Friday that he saw his best friend Kemar Gooding fall to the ground before being dragged by the foot and stabbed by Jamar Twin Man Watson.

Appearing in the No. 4 Supreme Court as a state witness in Watson’s murder trial, Lowe testified of being “right behind” Gooding as they pursued the accused through the River Terminal, after Watson threw a rock at Gooding.

Lowe said he and Gooding were by a shop in the River Terminal talking. Gooding was leaning on the table and as he got up to stretch, Watson, who was passing, bounced him. Gooding told him, “You could at least say sorry”. Watson’s reply was to curse at the two before throwing a rock.

“Quick so, a big rock come down the line,” Lowe testified, saying that the projectile narrowly missed Gooding’s young son who had been standing on the table. Lowe said it was at this point that he and Gooding took off running behind Watson.

“On entering the Constitution Terminal Construction site, Kemar fell. Twin Man turn round and took Kemar and stab him in his chest and then ran inside the building, and from there big rocks was coming from inside the building where the people upstairs there was throwing rocks at we,” he stated.

He added that several other men had also been running behind them after seeing when Watson threw the rock while they were at the shop.

Lowe said that at that time, he was trying to get Gooding off the ground.

Asked by Deputy Director of Public Prosecutions Alliston Seale SC what happened just after Gooding fell, Lowe said Watson, who had swung into the gate by the construction site, turned around and dragged the deceased by his foot onto the construction site before ‘jucking’ him.

“Kemar tried to get up afterwards. I tell he, ‘My man, you now get juck, boy’ and he hold up he shirt and then he just drop back,” Lower told the court, adding that he and another man placed Gooding in a ZR and took him to the hospital.

“I remember telling he don’t respond, just don’t close he eyes,” he said emotionally. The witness said he stayed at the hospital until he received word that his friend had died.

Defence attorney Safiya Moore asked the witness if Gooding had thrown a bottle at Watson at the shop. Initially, Lowe said he remembered a bottle was thrown but not by whom. When it was pointed out that he had said in his statement, which was recorded on the day of the incident, that Gooding had thrown a bottle at the accused’s back, Lowe stated that the report would have to be correct.

Asked why he decided to run behind the two men, Lowe replied, “I was going to defend my friend.”

Moore suggested to the witness that he and the men running behind Watson were armed, but he denied this.

Earlier in the trial, Inspector Sonia Thompson of the Criminal Investigation Department told the court that three witnesses had identified Watson as the person who stabbed Gooding during the identification parade conducted two days after the incident.

Watson identified all three witnesses as persons who had run and thrown rocks at him on the day.

Watson, 36, of School Gap, Hindsbury Road, St Michael, is charged with killing Gooding, of Ellerton, St George, on March 27, 2018.