“Satan” to know fate next Tuesday for teen’s murder

Thirty-seven-year-old Alvin Reid, also called “Satan”, on trial for the murder of 14-year-old Malika Hamilton of Two Sisters Village, East Coast Demerara, will know his fate next Tuesday, October 25, when the case would be put to the jury for deliberation of a verdict.
Reid has denied murdering Hamilton between August 8 and 9, 2016.
Attorneys-at-Law prosecuting the matter are Simran Gajraj, Muntaz Ali and Taneisha Saygon. After calling several witnesses, they closed their case against the accused on Monday. Reid’s lawyer, Konyo Sandiford-Holder, had thereafter made a no-case submission, but it was overruled by Demerara High Court Judge Sandil Kissoon, and Reid had been called upon to lead a defence, after which closing addresses were made by both sides.
Justice Kissoon then adjourned the matter to next Tuesday, when he would sum up the evidence before putting the case to the jurors for deliberation on a verdict.
Reid, of Nimrod Street, Ann’s Grove, East Coast Demerara (ECD), had been committed to stand trial for the murder of the teen girl in 2018. However, in 2019, he was mistakenly released from prison while awaiting trial, and was recaptured only on September 21, 2022.
It has been reported that Hamilton and Reid, who had been known to each other, had gone for a swim in the Hope Canal on the ECD on August 8, 2016. She was never again seen alive, and her body was subsequently found by residents of the community floating in the canal several miles away from the Hope Canal Bridge.
Hamilton had left home following an argument with her father over the telephone, and had never returned home. Reid, who had managed to evade the Police after being identified as a suspect in her murder, was eventually found hiding in a barrel in the Ann’s Grove cemetery a few days later.