Mechanic acquitted of 2018 New Year’s Day murder

Derek Achong

A Ch­agua­nas me­chan­ic has been ac­quit­ted of mur­der­ing his friend on New Year’s Day in 2018.

Nack­ool “Dan­ny” Ram­cha­ran, 37, of Gopaul Trace, Long­denville, was found not guilty at the end of his judge-alone tri­al be­fore Jus­tice Nali­ni Singh at the Hall of Jus­tice in Port-of-Spain on Mon­day.

Ram­cha­ran faced charges for the mur­der of John Ramkissoon, a re­tired po­lice of­fi­cer, on Jan­u­ary 1, 2018.

Ramkissoon’s rel­a­tives tes­ti­fied that he had been lim­ing and drink­ing al­co­hol with Ram­cha­ran and that both men sound­ed in­tox­i­cat­ed.

They said they heard Ramkissoon shout, “get out of my yard”, be­fore they found him bleed­ing from stab wounds.

How­ev­er, they ad­mit­ted they did not see who Ramkissoon di­rect­ed the re­mark to­wards or see Ram­cha­ran at­tack him. They al­so could not con­firm when Ram­cha­ran left the prop­er­ty.

Un­der cross-ex­am­i­na­tion by Ram­cha­ran’s at­tor­ney, Del­cia Hel­wig-Robert­son, Ramkissoon’s rel­a­tives ac­cept­ed that he had a close re­la­tion­ship with Ram­cha­ran and that they were un­aware of any dis­pute be­tween them.

Hel­wig-Robert­son con­tend­ed that Ramkissoon was last seen in the com­pa­ny of his wife, from whom he was es­tranged.

In de­liv­er­ing her de­ci­sion, Jus­tice Singh said she could not be sure be­yond a rea­son­able doubt that Ram­cha­ran was guilty.

She raised con­cerns about the time­line es­tab­lished by Ramkissoon’s rel­a­tives and the lack of foren­sic ev­i­dence, as no DNA ev­i­dence linked Ram­cha­ran de­spite test­ing be­ing car­ried out.

Jus­tice Singh al­so said State pros­e­cu­tors could not re­fute the pos­si­bil­i­ty that an­oth­er in­di­vid­ual was present and killed Ramkissoon.

Ram­cha­ran was al­so rep­re­sent­ed by Kamei­ka Pe­ters of the Pub­lic De­fend­ers’ De­part­ment.