DEREK ACHONG

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

A 35-year-old man from Diego Mar­tin has been freed of mur­der­ing a neigh­bour in 2009.

Syl­van “Split Peas” Thomas, of Covi­gne Road, Diego Mar­tin, was ac­quit­ted of the charge at the end of his judge-alone tri­al be­fore Jus­tice Trevor Jones on Wednes­day.

Thomas was ac­cused of mur­der­ing for­mer Un­em­ploy­ment Re­lief Pro­gramme (URP) labour­er Akiel Bernard on Jan­u­ary 30, 2009.

Bernard and a 13-year-old rel­a­tive were seat­ed in his car near his home, when they were ap­proached by two gun­men who shot Bernard sev­er­al times be­fore run­ning away.

The teen shield­ed him­self with his school bag and man­aged to es­cape with­out be­ing shot.

The State’s two main wit­ness­es were the for­mer teenag­er and a neigh­bour, who claimed to have wit­nessed the shoot­ing from her bed­room win­dow.

While both claimed to have recog­nised Thomas as one of the shoot­ers, they gave con­flict­ing ac­counts of the cloth­ing he was al­leged­ly wear­ing and his hair­style at the time.

They al­so gave vary­ing ev­i­dence over the light­ing and weath­er con­di­tions on the morn­ing of Bernard’s mur­der.

In his rul­ing, Jus­tice Jones de­scribed the ev­i­dence link­ing Thomas to the crime as ten­u­ous.

He al­so found fault in the pro­ce­dure utilised by homi­cide de­tec­tives to have the wit­ness­es of­fi­cial­ly iden­ti­fy Thomas.

In their clos­ing sub­mis­sions in the tri­al, which be­gan last week and was com­plet­ed in five days, Thomas’ lawyers, led by John Heath, SC, al­so point­ed out that po­lice of­fi­cers failed to in­ves­ti­gate his al­i­bi that he was at work at the time of the shoot­ing.

“The State has not led any ev­i­dence which dis­proves the al­i­bi ... The court is asked to care­ful­ly con­sid­er why, in the cir­cum­stances of this case, the pros­e­cu­tion have been un­able to dis­prove the al­i­bi,” they said.

Thomas was al­so rep­re­sent­ed by Karunaa Bis­ram­s­ingh and Shel­don My­coo.