Man freed 10 years after double-murder

A 31-year-old Maraval man was yesterday freed of killing two men at a St James bar back in 2007. Jayvon Charles of Boissiere Village was before Justice Althea Alexis-Windsor in the Port of Spain High Court, charged with the murder of Anthony Boodoo and Wilfred Mohammed on December 1, 2007.

It was Charles’ second trial, the first having ended with a hung jury in 2014. At the end of the judge’s directions to them, a 12-member jury returned just an hour later with not-guilty verdicts. Charles said the first thing he wanted to do was visit his son, who was born shortly after he was charged and remanded in prison.

It was the prosecution’s case that at about midday, Boodoo, Mohammed and friends Sheldon Bernard and Harold Joseph were liming outside a bar at the corner of Francis and Perigod Roads in Long Circular, when two men approached. They shot Boodoo several times, threatened Bernard and other patrons and then shot Boodoo twice more at close range.

Mohammed was hit by a stray bullet and died while being treated at hospital. The State’s main witness was Joseph, who said he hid when the shooting began. Joseph identified Charles, whom he claimed to have known as a little boy. Joseph was killed before the preliminary inquiry started and his statements to police were tendered into evidence.

Attorneys Stephen Wilson and Delicia Helwig-Robertson represented Charles while the case was prosecuted by senior state attorney Anju Bhola.