“Worst day” ever, witness says of home invasion

The complainant in a 2016 aggravated burglary case now before the High Court says the incident was “hands down the worst day of my life”.

Lystra Ramsay nee Ifill was giving evidence on Thursday when the trial of accused Leross Leandre Burnett, of Bartletts Tenantry, Christ Church, began in the No. 3 Supreme Court.

Burnett is currently on trial alone but was previously charged along with three other men with entering the house of Terry Ramsay as trespassers on October 11, 2016, and stealing $1 040 cash, a necklace, and a cellular phone with an approximate value of $2 839 belonging to Lystra Ifill.

It is further alleged that they stole three bottles of cognac, five bottles of whiskey, a bottle of vodka, one wristwatch, a digital recorder, and $60 cash, all with an approximate value of $8 976 and belonging to Ramsay. They were allegedly armed with firearms.

Responding to questions posed by Senior State Counsel Neville Watson, the complainant said her husband, who was then her fiancé, had left home to pick up his workers when the incident occurred.

She said she was asleep in the middle bedroom of her home when she suddenly heard someone say “get up”. According to the witness, a torchlight was pointed at her and she was “a bit confused in the beginning”.

The complainant said she then noticed there were men in her home wearing dark-coloured clothing and masks, and one wore a pair of white sneakers.

After requesting to put on her glasses, which she was allowed to do, the complainant was pulled by her hair from the bed and the men demanded money.

Ramsay explained that when the perpetrators led her by her hair to the master bedroom to get the money, she discovered that the room had been “already ransacked” and the “money was gone”.

She disclosed that she also went to get her bag in the closet but the home invaders had already searched it.

“I said ‘you have all the money, I don’t have anything else’,” she told Justice Carlisle Greaves and the nine jurors hearing the case.

After asking to get dressed, as she was only wearing a blanket at the time, the men “were spewing threats on my life”, Ramsay testified.

“They were like ‘leh we shoot she man, leh we kill she’ because I told them I didn’t have any more money. So they continued to threaten me. . . .  They had guns on me,” she added.

The woman was subsequently allowed to get dressed.

“They continued to keep the guns on me and badger me for money. They started asking for jewelry, they started asking for a safe, and I told them I don’t have a safe. I told them I don’t have any more money. They continued to threaten my life and told me they are going to shoot me in my head,” Ramsay said as she disclosed that her wrist had been tied with a kitchen towel and a belt belonging to her husband had been “wrapped . . . around the top part of my body”.

“They put me in [a] bedroom closet and that’s when I feared for my life the most because they then started knocking the guns on my head. They continued to say ‘leh we kill she, leh we kill she’ and I told them ‘please, please don’t shoot me, please don’t kill me’,” Ramsay continued.

The men subsequently left but returned shortly after for the security recorder which was “yanked . . . out the wall” where it was located in the office.

“I was freaking out again and I kept pacing and I remember him saying to me you need to keep quiet because they mean business and they will shoot you,” Ramsay told the court.

When the men finally left, she called her fiancé who contacted the police.

On October 23, 2016, lawmen returned to Ramsay’s house with one of the alleged perpetrators whom they identified as Burnett, she said.

“When he started to speak I automatically recognised his voice . . . as one of the perpetrators. That same voice had spoken to me on the morning of October 11,” said Ramsay.

Asked by the prosecutor how the alleged crime made her feel, Ramsay responded: “That was hands down the worst day of my life. . . . I am always looking over my shoulder . . . . I am paranoid. . . If anxiety [was] a person that would be me.”

Burnett’s attorney Dennis Headley who began to cross-examine Ramsay on Thursday afternoon will continue on Friday.