The 23-year-old La Hor­quet­ta welder, charged with the mur­ders of Vonet­ta Haynes-Reyes, 31, and her two sons- Me­lik, 8, and Makasi, 4-ap­peared yes­ter­day in the Ari­ma Mag­is­trates' Court yes­ter­day. An­cil Richards ap­peared be­fore Se­nior Mag­is­trate In­dra Ramoo-Haynes who read the charges to him. Richards ar­rived at the cour­t­house in the back of an un­marked po­lice SUV around 10 am. His ar­rival drew the at­ten­tion of a crowd of cu­ri­ous on­look­ers who were out­side the court. Many on­look­ers ex­pressed shock over his youth­ful ap­pear­ance and slim built. The SUV was es­cort­ed by two marked po­lice ve­hi­cles with a group of heav­i­ly-armed of­fi­cers who blocked the two sides of the road for Richards' en­trance.

Richards, who sport­ed short dread­locks hair­style, was dressed in a blue T-shirt and black jeans.

He was ar­rest­ed last Wednes­day at a rel­a­tive's house on Rag­bir Street, St Au­gus­tine, hours af­ter Haynes-Reyes and her sons were buried, Richards' lawyer, Col­in Selvon, ap­pealed to Ramoo-Haynes to re­strict fur­ther me­dia cov­er­age of the case to re­duce fur­ther pre-tri­al pub­lic­i­ty and asked for a speedy pre­lim­i­nary in­quiry in the case. Selvon said: "I do not want the me­dia fren­zy to con­tin­ue. The me­dia is bent on try­ing the mat­ter in the pub­lic do­main." Selvon al­so ex­pressed con­cerned over re­ports of his client's al­leged con­fes­sion to the crime and the leak of sen­si­tive ev­i­dence from se­nior po­lice of­fi­cers.

Ramoo-Haynes de­nied Selvon's re­quest and ad­vised him to write to the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions Roger Gas­pard for as­sis­tance on the mat­ter. Selvon al­so re­quest­ed dis­clo­sure of ev­i­dence from the pros­e­cu­tion.

Po­lice pros­e­cu­tor Sgt Fitzger­ald John­son said the mat­ter was on­ly a cou­ple days old and dis­clo­sure would be made as soon as pos­si­ble and a state pros­e­cu­tor al­so would be ap­point­ed. Richards stood mo­tion­less with his hands at his side dur­ing his ten-minute ap­pear­ance be­fore Ramoo-Haynes. Haynes-Reyes' moth­er, Joyce Haynes, who was abroad at the time of the mur­ders was present in court when the charges were read to Richards. Me­lik and Makasi's fa­ther, Selvon Reyes, was not present. Haynes-Reyes and her sons were found mur­dered in sep­a­rate rooms of their Plumba­go Av­enue, La Hor­quet­ta, Ari­ma, home on Ju­ly 21 by a 20-year-old friend. Her Nis­san B12, which was ini­tial­ly miss­ing from her home on the dis­cov­ery, was found hours lat­er aban­doned in Cara­po, Ari­ma. Post-mortems a day lat­er at the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre, St James, re­vealed that Haynes-Reyes, an em­ploy­ee of a cos­met­ic store at Trinci­ty Mall, died of punc­ture wounds to the front and back of the neck, while her sons died of chop wounds to the neck.

Richards was charged last Fri­day by Sgt Curt Si­mon of the Re­gion 2 Homi­cide Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tions.

In­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the triple mur­der, which led to Richards' ar­rest less than one week lat­er, were con­duct­ed by Se­nior Supt Don­ald De­noon, act­ing Se­nior Supt David Abra­ham, of the Ari­ma CX­ID, and ASP Ken­rick Ed­wards. In re­sponse to con­cerns ex­pressed by Selvon about his client's safe­ty while re­mand­ed in prison, Pris­ons Com­mis­sion­er John Rougi­er said yes­ter­day that Richards' safe­ty was guar­an­teed. In a news re­port, Rougi­er said that Richards will be close­ly mon­i­tored while in re­mand and will un­der­go psy­cho­log­i­cal eval­u­a­tion. Richards was re­mand­ed to the Gold­en Grove Prison and is ex­pect­ed to reap­pear in court on Sep­tem­ber 1.