Prosecutor says accused’s and witnesses’ accounts not adding up

“A crafty concoction of a story!”

That’s how Crown Counsel Romario Straker described the evidence given by accused Marc Akeem Orlando Reid and two other witnesses who took the stand during his trial.

He made the statement while delivering closing arguments on Tuesday in the No. 2 Supreme Court.

Reid, of Ashton, Hall, St Peter, is charged with causing serious bodily harm to Donte Alleyne with intent on August 30, 2017, and also unlawfully and maliciously inflicting serious bodily harm on Alleyne on the same date.

Addressing the jury, Straker maintained that not only were there differences in Reid’s statement that he gave to police and his testimony from the witness stand, but the evidence given by Reid’s former girlfriend and her brother simply did not add up.

In urging the jurors to “look at everything down to the nitty-gritty”, Straker said their attempts to make it appear as though Reid had acted in self-defence had failed.

He suggested that Reid’s effort to make it look as though he had been accosted by the complainant and other boys prior to the incident was a smokescreen.

“I mean, if I could throw it in and distract you with it, why not, because that’s exactly what it is meant to do. The idea is to draw your focus away from the events that happened and the things that don’t add up, and make you focus on this supposed slap in the face that Shaquon [a witness] said never happened,” Straker contended.

He accused Reid’s former girlfriend and her younger brother of “putting in things” to back Reid up.

Straker said the boldest of them was the claim that they saw the complainant hit Reid with a bottle in his chest, and Reid then caught the bottle and threw it back at Alleyne.

“Not even the West Indies cricketers that get paid to catch balls could do that, but Marc get it do,” he proclaimed.

He said to make matters worse, Reid never spoke of the complainant throwing a bottle at him.

Straker said the differences in Reid’s statement and evidence on the stand were also telling.

He pointed out that while in Reid’s statement he claimed that he saw the complainant “trying to get something from his waist” during their scuffle, on the witness stand he gave evidence that he saw the complainant grabbing for something on the ground.

Furthermore, Straker insisted that the testimony of the former girlfriend’s mother did not support their evidence.

He told the jurors that Reid had been the aggressor and had intended to do serious bodily harm on the day in question.

“Based on all that I heard, I am of the view that Marc intended to do serious bodily harm to Donte…not this whole thing that he was defending himself and he was frightened and didn’t have anywhere else to go. Nothing else supports that when you weigh it against all that has been said,” Straker said.

“You may say that he did not intend for this thing to happen and it just happen out of the blue, and that is why we have a two-pronged indictment, so that if you cannot find that it was his intention to do serious bodily harm there is the lesser count.”

Defence counsel Sharise King will deliver her closing arguments on Wednesday.