Derek Achong

The as­sault case against so­ca star Machel Mon­tano con­tin­ued yes­ter­day with ques­tions be­ing raised about his abil­i­ty to han­dle the pres­sure of overea­ger fans.The sec­ond day of the cross-ex­am­i­na­tion was con­tin­ued by state pros­e­cu­tor George Bus­by in the sev­enth court of the Port-of-Spain Mag­is­trates' Court be­fore Mag­is­trate Mau­reen Ba­boolal-Gafoor.Bus­by be­gan by ques­tion­ing Mon­tano about his feel­ings when fans ap­proached him when he was sick, tired or just want­ed to min­gle and re­lax pri­vate­ly.Bus­by said: "When you are not feel­ing well and fans ap­proach you, do you think they con­sid­er you are a per­son too and need your pri­va­cy?"Mon­tano an­swered: "Some­times, but I have be­come ac­cus­tomed to it over many years."Af­ter rephras­ing the ques­tion sev­er­al times, Bus­by said he felt Mon­tano was an in­tel­li­gent wit­ness and was be­ing eva­sive in an­swer­ing his ques­tions and want­ed di­rect an­swers.Dana See­ta­hal, SC, who rep­re­sents Mon­tano, ob­ject­ed to Bus­by's style of cross-ex­am­i­na­tion, claim­ing he was en­gag­ing in an ar­gu­ment with her client.

Bus­by al­so ques­tioned Mon­tano about his con­trol over his tem­per when per­form­ing with his band."You (Mon­tano) have been per­form­ing for 30 years. Over that time, have you lost your tem­per, when your band is play­ing the wrong tem­po," Bus­by said.Mon­tano re­spond­ed: "Yes, but over that time I have de­vel­oped a tol­er­ance for it. These things hap­pen."Mon­tano is joint­ly charged with so­ca artists Joel "Zan" Feveck, Rod­ney "Ben­jai" Le Blanc and mu­sic pro­duc­er and song­writer Ker­nal Roberts for the in­ci­dent that al­leged­ly oc­curred out­side the Zen night­club in 2007.Mon­tano al­so was pressed by the pros­e­cu­tion about the num­ber of al­co­holic drinks con­sumed by the him and the group on the night.

Mon­tano ad­mit­ted to the court he had three glass­es of wine at a cel­e­bra­tion par­ty in his ho­n­our at the night­club be­fore the in­ci­dent, two beers at Roberts' home, "Rain­o­ra­ma", and three vod­ka and cran­ber­ry juice drinks on re­turn­ing to Zen lat­er that night.Bus­by im­plied Mon­tano was clear­ly "mix­ing his drinks" on the night.When asked, Mon­tano could not give a clear list­ing of the pos­si­ble al­co­hol that was con­sumed by the co-ac­cused that night.In his ques­tion­ing, Bus­by tried to es­tab­lish a re­la­tion­ship be­tween Mon­tano and Zen nigh­club own­er John­ny Soong, and asked Mon­tano if he con­sid­ered Soong as a close friend."I have known him (Soong) for over 15 years and he is a good friend," Mon­tano said.Cross-ex­am­i­na­tion is ex­pect­ed to con­tin­ue this morn­ing af­ter which the mat­ter will be ad­journed as Mon­tano is sched­uled to per­form in New York's Madi­son Square Gar­dens on Fri­day.