5 freed of couple’s murder after decade on remand

Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

Five men have been freed of mur­der­ing a cou­ple in Laven­tille af­ter spend­ing al­most a decade on re­mand await­ing tri­al.

Olatun­ji “Ola” Den­bow, Michael “Mikey” Find­lay, Kyle Bel­grave, Seon “Max” Barn­swell, and Kelon Max­ine were dis­charged af­ter State pros­e­cu­tors of­fered no ev­i­dence against them when their case came up for tri­al be­fore High Court Judge Trevor Jones at the Hall of Jus­tice in Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day morn­ing.

The men were ac­cused of mur­der­ing An­dre La Touche and Abi­o­la Noel on Feb­ru­ary 22, 2016.

Ac­cord­ing to po­lice re­ports, Noel, 25, and La Touche, 28, were leav­ing Noel’s East­ern Quar­ry, Laven­tille home in a sil­ver Nis­san Ti­i­da around 8.30 am when gun­men ap­proached the mov­ing ve­hi­cle and fired sev­er­al shots at it.

La Touche, the dri­ver, crashed the ve­hi­cle in­to a con­crete dump­ster. The State’s case against the men was based on claims made by for­mer res­i­dent Crys­tal Lewis.

Lewis claimed that when the cou­ple ar­rived at Noel’s home the pre­vi­ous night, one of the men ap­proached them and warned them that La Touche was not wel­comed in the com­mu­ni­ty.

She fur­ther al­leged that she saw the men chas­ing af­ter the car and were shoot­ing at it the fol­low­ing morn­ing.

The men, who were most­ly rep­re­sent­ed by a team of at­tor­neys from the Pub­lic De­fend­ers’ De­part­ment (PDD) led by Stephen Wil­son, Deli­cia Hel­wig-Robert­son, and Shane Pa­tience, were seek­ing to re­ly on a statu­to­ry de­c­la­ra­tion giv­en by Lewis in 2022.

In the doc­u­ment, Lewis claimed that she framed the men at the re­quest of the po­lice so that they (the po­lice) would not pros­e­cute her then-boyfriend for firearm pos­ses­sion.

“I felt pres­sured in­to giv­ing the state­ment and I there­fore gave the state­ment based on promis­es made to me by po­lice of­fi­cers,” Lewis said, as she claimed that she cur­rent­ly lives in the Unit­ed States.

In an­nounc­ing the de­ci­sion by the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) to dis­con­tin­ue the case, pros­e­cu­tors Solange De­venish and Tam­my Cato not­ed that the State did not ac­cept the con­tents of the de­c­la­ra­tion.

How­ev­er, they not­ed that the de­ci­sion was based on the fact that they could not lo­cate Lewis to tes­ti­fy against the group.

They said it would be un­fair for Lewis’ state­ments im­pli­cat­ing the men to be used as ev­i­dence when their at­tor­neys would not be able to cross-ex­am­ine her over claims in the de­c­la­ra­tion.

Lewis was al­so the State’s main wit­ness against three men from En­ter­prise, who were ac­cused of mur­der­ing a fel­low res­i­dent in 2015.

In 2021, the charges against the trio were dis­missed, af­ter a mag­is­trate re­fused an ap­pli­ca­tion to use her wit­ness state­ments in her ab­sence. The mag­is­trate found that the Jus­tice of the Peace (JP), who cer­ti­fied Lewis’ main state­ment, ad­mit­ted that she (Lewis) did not show him any iden­ti­fi­ca­tion doc­u­ments first.

The JP al­so ad­mit­ted that the sig­na­ture placed by the woman, who was brought to him, dif­fered from sig­na­tures on oth­er doc­u­ments at­trib­uted to Lewis.

The five men were al­so rep­re­sent­ed by Ayan­na Norville-Mod­este, Michael Mod­este, Make­da Der­rick, Markus Isaac, Michelle Gon­za­les, Sarah Julien, Rosario Sookdeo and An­drew Sharpe.