Moneychanger’s murder: “I am innocent” – murder accused to jury

…co-accused freed

One of the two men on trial for the 2018 murder of moneychanger Sean Nurse has been freed, while his co-accused has been called upon to lead a defence.
Thirty-year-old Kerwin Dos Santos of Freeman Street, East La Penitence, Georgetown was found not guilty, and trial Judge Simone Morris-Ramall directed the 12-member jury to return a formal not-guilty verdict in his favour on Wednesday. She did so after upholding the no-case submission made on Dos Santos’s behalf by defence lawyer Nigel Hughes. Accordingly, this accused was discharged and freed.
A submission of no case to answer is usually made at the close of the prosecution’s case, when the defence believes that the prosecution’s case does not support a finding of guilty.

“I am innocent”
Meanwhile, Dos Santos’s co-accused, 30-year-old mason George Hope, also of Freeman Street, East La Penitence, Georgetown, has been called upon to lead a defence. In so doing, the murder accused, on the advice of his lawyer, Hughes, elected to give an unsworn statement via Zoom from prison. He told the court of his alibi.

According to him, two days after Nurse was killed, he was at his child mother’s home when his cousin called him and told him that the Police were at his home looking for him. He said he eventually went to the Brickdam Police Station, where a Police detective began questioning him about his whereabouts on February 4, 2018.
Hope said that when he told the male Police rank he was at home on that day, the rank showed him video footage of his motorcycle. Hope stated that he told the Policeman that February 3, 2014 was the last time he rode the motorcycle.
He claimed that he was taken into a room with about five other Police ranks, and while in there, he saw Dos Santos, his co-accused crying. Sometime after, he said, a Policeman give him a paper that had words on it to sign, and he complied because he did not want the Police to torture him like how they tortured another man who was arrested in relation to the murder.

Hope also related that he dropped out of school in Grade Seven, and as such, he cannot read and write. During his testimony, he maintained that he was at home with his six-month-old son at the time of the robbery/murder.
“I am innocent of this crime. I don’t know about this crime,” he maintained.
Justice Morris-Ramlall has fixed this morning to hear closing arguments from the defence and prosecution. After that is done, she will sum up the evidence from the trial, which has been ongoing for close to two weeks, to the jurors, and then they will retire to deliberate on a verdict.
Attorneys-at-Law Marisa Edwards, Tanesha Saigon, Abiola Lowe and Delon Fraser are the prosecutors. They have given oral notice of the State’s intention to appeal Dos Santos’s acquittal.
The indictment against Hope states that on February 4, 2018, in the county of Demerara, he murdered Nurse, called “Fabulous”, during the course or furtherance of a robbery.

Background
Nurse, a well-known moneychanger and father of three, of Lot 33 Shopping Plaza, South Ruimveldt, Georgetown, was sitting in a chair at the corner of Avenue of the Republic and America Street in Georgetown when he was approached by a man armed with a handgun.
The man demanded that Nurse hand over a bag containing an undisclosed sum of local and foreign currencies. Nurse, 47, resisted, and in retaliation, the bandit pulled the trigger, shooting him once in his head. He collapsed, and died almost immediately.
The alleged culprit then escaped on foot, proceeding north on Avenue of the Republic and then east into Charlotte Street.
Police Headquarters had said that a 9mm spent shell was found at the scene, and that several persons were questioned as to the description of the shooter.
Reports stated that the man who shot and killed Nurse was clad in a red hoodie and a pair of brown trousers.
Dos Santos and Hope were initially charged with Nurse’s murder in 2018. The following year, they were committed to stand trial at the High Court, after a city Magistrate, at the conclusion of a Preliminary Inquiry (PI), ruled that there was sufficient evidence against them.