Sangre Grande brothers freed in 2019 teen murder case

Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

A pair of broth­ers from San­gre Grande have been found not guilty of mur­der­ing a teenag­er in 2019.

Vic­tor Tim­o­thy, 40, and his 31-year-old broth­er Leon, both of Damarie Hill, San­gre Grande, were yes­ter­day freed of the charge by High Court Judge Nali­ni Singh af­ter the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) of­fered no fur­ther ev­i­dence dur­ing their tri­al.

The DPP’s Of­fice made the de­ci­sion af­ter the broth­ers’ lawyer, Lar­ry Williams, chal­lenged the cred­i­bil­i­ty of its main wit­ness at the start of their judge-alone tri­al last week.

De­spite the out­come, Jus­tice Singh did not or­der the broth­ers’ im­me­di­ate re­lease be­cause they have a pend­ing case al­leg­ing that they pos­sessed a pro­hib­it­ed cell­phone while on re­mand. They have not been grant­ed bail in that mat­ter.

The broth­ers were ac­cused of mur­der­ing 17-year-old Isa­iah De­shawn Hit­lal on Feb­ru­ary 2, 2019.

Hit­lal was lim­ing with two friends at North East­ern Set­tle­ment in San­gre Grande when a ve­hi­cle stopped near where they were seat­ed at the side of the road.

Two men re­port­ed­ly got out of the ve­hi­cle, and one of them shot at the trio.

Hit­lal, a Form Four stu­dent at San­gre Grande Sec­ondary School, was shot sev­er­al times. His friends es­caped un­in­jured af­ter run­ning away and hid­ing un­til the men and ve­hi­cle left.

The broth­ers were charged af­ter Hit­lal’s friends im­pli­cat­ed them. They faced charges of mur­der and pos­ses­sion of an il­le­gal firearm and am­mu­ni­tion. Leon was al­so charged with shoot­ing with in­tent.

The tri­al be­gan with tes­ti­mo­ny from one of Hit­lal’s friends, who al­leged­ly wit­nessed the shoot­ing.

Williams high­light­ed dis­crep­an­cies be­tween the man’s ev­i­dence in court and the six state­ments he gave to homi­cide de­tec­tives af­ter the shoot­ing. In his first four state­ments, the man said he could not iden­ti­fy the back-seat pas­sen­ger who fired the shots be­cause the shoot­er was wear­ing a sur­gi­cal mask.

In his last two state­ments, the man said he recog­nised the shoot­er as Leon be­cause the mask on­ly par­tial­ly cov­ered his face.

Williams al­so ques­tioned how the wit­ness could have recog­nised Tim­o­thy as the oth­er at­tack­er when he said he ran away as the men were get­ting out of the car. Williams sug­gest­ed the wit­ness would not have been able to see Tim­o­thy in­side the ap­proach­ing car be­cause of its head­lights.

Af­ter the wit­ness com­plet­ed his tes­ti­mo­ny and in­tense cross-ex­am­i­na­tion last Fri­day, pros­e­cu­tors Ke­ston Abra­ham and Kern Young re­quest­ed an ad­journ­ment to con­sult DPP Roger Gas­pard about the fu­ture of the case.

Ear­li­er this week, the DPP’s Of­fice wrote to the broth­ers’ lawyers to say it would present no fur­ther ev­i­dence, in­clud­ing tes­ti­mo­ny from Hit­lal’s oth­er friend, who was al­leged­ly present at the time of the shoot­ing.

Af­ter dis­charg­ing the broth­ers, Jus­tice Singh com­mend­ed Abra­ham and Young for act­ing in the in­ter­est of jus­tice.

The broth­ers were al­so rep­re­sent­ed by at­tor­ney Toni Roberts.