Man freed of nine-year-old murder

NINE years after he was arrested for killing a man after attending the WASA fete, a 39-year-old Morvant man was freed by a High Court judge.

Frankie Bartholomew, 32, of Second Caledonia was yesterday freed of murdering Marcus Mark by Justice Lisa Ramsumair-Hinds, who upheld an application challenging the reliability of the evidence in the case.

Bartholomew’s lawyers Wayne Sturge and Danielle Rampersad questioned the reliability of the evidence of Mark’s girlfriend Ornella Nanton, the State’s main witness in the case.

Nanton was murdered before she could testify at the preliminary inquiry and prosecutors had hoped to have her statement to police tendered into evidence in their case against Bartholomew.

Ramsumair-Hinds agreed with the defence. Bartholomew was not immediately freed as he is awaiting trial for another murder which took place after Mark was killed on February 1, 2009. Mark had left the fete and was at the corner of the Eastern Main Road and Railway Road, St Joseph, when he was ambushed by a man, who shot him several times.

Nanton allegedly witnessed the shooting and identified Bartholomew as Mark’s attacker.

Six months later, she was murdered near her home at St Margaret’s Village in Claxton Bay.

In 2011, Bartholomew was awarded $50,000 in compensation over a beating he and two men suffered at the hands of police at the Port-of-Spain Magistrate’s Court in December 2009. The case was prosecuted by Hema Sundarsingh.

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