Complainant testifies in murder, wounding trial

Zondelle Sobers testified that as she tried to intervene while the woman accused of murdering her partner was stabbing him, she then turned on her, causing her to flee to a neighbour’s house.

Sobers took the witness stand in the No. 4 Supreme Court before Justice Laurie-Ann Smith-Bovell.as the murder and wounding trial of Romancia Odwin continued on Thursday before a jury of ten women and two men.

Odwin, 26, of Whopping, Orange Hill, St James, has denied murdering 56-year-old Ronald Smokey Skeete and unlawfully wounding Sobers with intent to maim, disfigure or disable her, or to cause her other serious bodily harm, and unlawfully and maliciously wounding her, all between July 18 and 19, 2020.

Sobers testified that she had been suspicious of the relationship between Skeete and Odwin, telling the court that she had searched his phone and found “plenty” messages between the two.

She said that the name and picture attached to the contact was Romancia.

“I ask him at one time: ‘You know she is a little girl? Wuh you doing?’ He tell me I imagining things, so I left it as that,” Sobers testified.

She also read part of her statement to police, where she admitted that she had forwarded some of those conversations to her own phone, with “Romancia asking Smokey to book apartments for both of them, asking him to buy food and for money on numerous occasions and mostly sexual acts they performed on each other and favours that they wanted from each other”.

Recalling returning home from work that Saturday, Sobers said that ten minutes later there was a knock on the door, and it was Odwin asking for Skeete. The complainant told her he was doing something, and she left but returned shortly after. Skeete again said he was busy and Odwin left.

Sobers stated that she finished washing, went into the back bedroom, and fell asleep. She was awakened during the night by a noise in the front bedroom and saw that the door was halfway closed.

She said: “When I pushed the bedroom door, I saw Romancia over Skeete stabbing. He was on the ground. Blood was on the ground, and caused me to fall down along with Romancia…. I holler: ‘Romancia, wuh you doing, girl?’ And she stabbed at me. I get that at the right side of my ear. So I grab at her hand, but being that she taller than me, I get another one in my head.”

Seeing that Skeete was not moving, she stated that as she ran out of the bedroom towards the door, Odwin stabbed her in the back near her right shoulder.

Sobers said she kicked Odwin, ran through the door and down to the accused’s house, where she saw four men playing dominoes. One of them was Odwin’s father, and another man named Paul, to whom she shouted, “Romancia up dey stabbing up Skeete. Go and see what going on.”

Odwin’s father began applying pressure to her wounds, while the accused’s mother brought her clothing as she was only wearing a boxer, before an ambulance arrived, she told the court.

She spent between four and five days at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, and told the court that the injuries left her with nerve damage and the inability to walk properly, stating tearfully: “I am medically unfit, could hardly work and just here.”

Acting Director of Public Prosecutions Alliston Seale SC and State Counsel Paul Prescod are prosecuting the case, while Sade Harris, in association with Michael Lashley SC, represents Odwin.