Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

A 30-year-old man from Mor­vant, ac­cused of mur­der­ing a woman and wound­ing her boyfriend in 2023, has been freed af­ter her boyfriend ad­mit­ted that he had wrong­ly im­pli­cat­ed him.

Ish­mael Cyrus was found not guilty of the crimes at the end of his ex­pe­dit­ed tri­al be­fore Jus­tice Nali­ni Singh on Tues­day.

Cyrus, who was rep­re­sent­ed by Adaphia Tran­coso-Ribeiro and Adelia Jor­dan, of the Pub­lic De­fend­ers’ De­part­ment, was ac­cused of mur­der­ing 38-year-old Naila Nel­son on Feb­ru­ary 26, 2023.

Nel­son and her boyfriend were at her Barataria home when two gun­men en­tered and opened fire on them be­fore run­ning away.

The cou­ple were tak­en to hos­pi­tal for treat­ment. Nel­son suc­cumbed to her in­juries, while her boyfriend re­cov­ered and iden­ti­fied Cyrus as one of their at­tack­ers.

Be­fore the case went to tri­al, Nel­son’s boyfriend sent emails to the court and the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions claim­ing that he did not want to tes­ti­fy against Cyrus as af­ter ini­tial­ly im­pli­cat­ing him, he saw CCTV footage, which proved his (Cyrus) in­no­cence.

Tes­ti­fy­ing in a pre-tri­al hear­ing, the man claimed that he wait­ed un­til the case was set for tri­al to raise the is­sue as, over a year ago, he spoke to the po­lice of­fi­cer who charged Cyrus, and re­ceived no as­sis­tance.

He claimed he was un­sure of the pro­ce­dure to fol­low and de­cid­ed to con­tact the court di­rect­ly af­ter re­ceiv­ing ad­vice from a Jus­tice of the Peace.

Af­ter State pros­e­cu­tors Nor­ma Pe­ters, and Shanelle Kissoon de­clined to with­draw the charges based on the ad­mis­sion, Jus­tice Singh sched­uled an ear­ly tri­al date, last Fri­day.

Pros­e­cu­tors sought to re­ly on the man’s ini­tial state­ment to the po­lice af­ter he failed to at­tend the hear­ing.

How­ev­er, they were forced to with­draw the ap­pli­ca­tion af­ter the man ap­peared at the next hear­ing on Mon­day.

Tes­ti­fy­ing dur­ing the tri­al, the man ad­mit­ted that he on­ly “got a glimpse” of the shoot­ers for one or two sec­onds.

He al­so ad­mit­ted that he mis­tak­en­ly iden­ti­fied Cyrus’ al­leged ac­com­plice, who could not have been in­volved as he (the sec­ond sus­pect) was un­der elec­tron­ic mon­i­tor­ing for sep­a­rate of­fences for which he was grant­ed bail at the time.

Jus­tice Singh en­quired whether the State had any oth­er ev­i­dence link­ing Cyrus to the crime be­fore find­ing him not guilty of the of­fences.