A man from Moru­ga has been ac­quit­ted of chop­ping his next door neigh­bour dur­ing a dis­pute over a prop­er­ty bound­ary in 2008.

Willi­ace Ro­driguez was found not guilty of wound­ing with in­tent to do griev­ous bod­i­ly harm at the end of his tri­al, last Fri­day.

It took a nine-mem­ber ju­ry be­fore Jus­tice De­van Ram­per­sad less than half an hour to re­turn with the ver­dict for Ro­driguez, of St Mary’s Vil­lage, Moru­ga.

Ro­driguez was ac­cused of at­tack­ing An­drew Gabaro on Sep­tem­ber 26, 2008.

Gabaro was in­stalling a fence around his prop­er­ty when he ar­gued with a fe­male neigh­bour over the lo­ca­tion where he was plac­ing a fenc­ing post.

The woman’s rel­a­tives Shaz­im Lal­loos­ingh and Ro­driguez re­port­ed­ly grabbed a pair of cut­lass­es and in­ter­vened.

They re­port­ed­ly planassed Gabaro with the flat side of the blades and he was chopped on his left hand in the process.

The duo fled the scene af­ter oth­er neigh­bours heard the com­mo­tion and came out­side.

When they were even­tu­al­ly ar­rest­ed, they were joint­ly charged with the crime.

In 2022, Lal­loos­ingh plead­ed guilty and was sen­tenced.

Dur­ing his tri­al, which last­ed four days, Ro­driguez de­nied any wrong­do­ing.

Pros­e­cu­tors had to re­ly on the state­ment that Gabaro gave to the po­lice af­ter the in­ci­dent as he passed away be­fore the case went to tri­al.

While be­ing cross-ex­am­ined by Ro­driguez’s lawyer Michelle Ali, of the Pub­lic De­fend­ers’ De­part­ment, PC Joseph Lam­bert was ac­cused of per­form­ing an in­com­plete in­ves­ti­ga­tion as he on­ly re­lied on Gabaro’s claims and did not take a state­ment from Ro­driguez, who was will­ing to give his ver­sion of the events.

In her clos­ing ad­dress be­fore the ju­ry, Ali high­light­ed nu­mer­ous in­con­sis­ten­cies and im­plau­si­bil­i­ties in the case in­clud­ing the med­ical re­ports, which did not cor­re­late to Gabaro’s claims over the at­tack.

Ro­driguez was al­so rep­re­sent­ed by Markus Is­sac.