SASCHA WIL­SON

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

Fif­teen years af­ter Michael “Boy Boy” Mad­er was gunned down, a High Court judge has sen­tenced a man to death by hang­ing for his mur­der.

Jus­tice Lisa Ram­sumair-Hinds hand­ed down the sen­tence on Shir­van Tou­s­saint, al­so known as “Bud­dies” and “Tall­man”, on No­vem­ber 11 fol­low­ing a judge-alone tri­al in the Port-of-Spain Supreme Court.

Tou­s­saint, of Char­ford Court, Port-of-Spain, was al­so found guilty of pos­ses­sion of a firearm and am­mu­ni­tion but not guilty of at­tempt­ing to mur­der Sparkle Williams and shoot­ing her with in­tent to cause griev­ous bod­i­ly harm.

The charges stemmed from an in­ci­dent on Sep­tem­ber 28, 2009.  Tou­s­saint opt­ed for a judge-alone tri­al on June 30, 2022, and was ar­raigned and plead­ed not guilty to the five charges on Sep­tem­ber 23 this year. State at­tor­neys Char­maine Samuel and Gilliana Guy led ev­i­dence from 21 pros­e­cu­tion wit­ness­es.

The State’s case was that short­ly af­ter mid­day on Sep­tem­ber 28, 2009, Mad­er had just left the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal with Williams af­ter vis­it­ing her sis­ter and her new­born ba­by.

Mad­er and Williams’ sis­ter had been in a re­la­tion­ship since she was 15 years old. Williams met Mad­er at the hos­pi­tal. On the way there, Williams stat­ed that she saw two men, one of whom was the ac­cused, sit­ting on a ta­ble at Ox­ford Street. 

She knew him from Harpe Place/Char­ford Court area, but she did not know his name. He looked at her, raised up and sat back down. Af­ter leav­ing the hos­pi­tal with Mad­er, they head­ed to Harpe Place us­ing the same route she had tak­en to go to the hos­pi­tal.

From Ox­ford Street, they en­tered the al­ley be­tween the pa­n­yard and the riv­er, but halfway along the al­ley some­one called out say­ing, “Boy Boy, al­lyuh kill Ron.” They both turned around and Williams saw the ac­cused. Mad­er re­spond­ed to the man say­ing, “Bud­dies, wha you talkin’ ‘bout?”

Both men be­gan walk­ing to­wards each oth­er, and the ac­cused sud­den­ly “dipped” and Mad­er ran up to him. The ac­cused had a gun in his up­raised hand, which  Mad­er grabbed and they be­gan to scuf­fle on the pave­ment.

Williams ap­proached, in­tend­ing to help by kick­ing the ac­cused, but he bent the hand that was hold­ing the gun and a shot rang out. Mad­er dropped to the ground on his back and the ac­cused point­ed the gun at Williams.

She stooped down and stayed low.  She heard sev­er­al more shots, but she did not get in­jured.

Williams saw the ac­cused stand­ing over Mad­er, shoot­ing him. She ran to Harpe Place where Mad­er’s moth­er lived, and alert­ed rel­a­tives that Mad­er was killed. An au­top­sy re­vealed that he died as a re­sult of two close-range wounds to the head.

Act­ing on in­for­ma­tion, po­lice went to the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port on Oc­to­ber 3, 2009, where they ar­rest­ed Tou­s­saint who was wait­ing to board a Caribbean Air­lines flight to Ft Laud­erdale, Mi­a­mi.

He was with his moth­er, who was al­so head­ing to Mi­a­mi. He asked to hug her be­fore be­ing tak­en away.

Tou­s­saint did not give ev­i­dence or call any wit­ness­es. 

The de­fence’s case put for­ward by Tou­s­saint’s at­tor­neys, Mario Mer­ritt, Danielle Ram­per­sad and Ran­dall Raphael, was that Williams did not see the shoot­er and the killing was gang-re­lat­ed. The judge, how­ev­er, re­ject­ed the as­ser­tions that Williams had an in­ter­est to serve or an im­prop­er mo­tive.  Jus­tice Ram­sumair-Hinds formed the view that Williams was an hon­est and cred­i­ble wit­ness.

The judge’s sen­tence on the fire­man and am­mu­ni­tion charges was eight years each, but Tou­s­saint’s time spent in cus­tody (15 years and 22 days), ex­ceed­ed that sen­tence.