A court has ap­proved the ex­tra­di­tion of a 24-year-old Unit­ed States cit­i­zen, who is want­ed in the US on charges of sec­ond-de­gree mur­der and firearm of­fences.

An­tho­ny Reg­is-Ash was ar­rest­ed in Oc­to­ber 2024 by Trinidad and To­ba­go po­lice and US law en­force­ment of­fi­cials.  Ear­li­er this month, act­ing Chief Mag­is­trate Chris­tine Charles com­mit­ted him for ex­tra­di­tion af­ter she said she was sat­is­fied the US had met the re­quire­ments set out un­der the Ex­tra­di­tion (Com­mon­wealth and For­eign Ter­ri­to­ries) Act.

Charles had al­so been ad­vised of his right to ap­ply for a writ of habeas cor­pus to chal­lenge the le­gal­i­ty of his de­ten­tion.

Reg­is-Ash is want­ed in Kings Coun­ty, New York, for the mur­der of Sharif Richards on Sep­tem­ber 29, 2021, at Fos­ter Av­enue and East 80th Street, Kings Coun­ty, Brook­lyn.

Ac­cord­ing to the in­dict­ment filed in the NY courts on Sep­tem­ber 29, 2022, he is want­ed on two counts of mur­der in the sec­ond de­gree, two counts of first-de­gree at­tempt­ed rob­bery and two counts of sec­ond-de­gree crim­i­nal pos­ses­sion of a weapon.

It is al­leged that New York Po­lice De­part­ment (NYPD) in­ves­ti­ga­tors ob­tained video sur­veil­lance footage from an ex­ten­sive can­vass of the area be­yond a mile from where Richards crashed his car af­ter he was shot.

Videos al­leged­ly ob­tained by the NYPD re­vealed that a male sus­pect and his fe­male ac­com­plice moved from their apart­ment to the scene of a fa­tal shoot­ing. The al­leged footage shows their re­turn to the apart­ment af­ter­wards, where they changed clothes.

The video al­leged­ly cap­tured events lead­ing up to the killing, in­clud­ing a man and woman ar­riv­ing on a block in Kings Coun­ty, with the woman get­ting out of their ve­hi­cle to join Richards in his car.

Mo­ments lat­er, the male sus­pect ap­proached the car, leaned in­side, and fired a gun­shot. Richards drove off but lat­er crashed. The shoot­er picked up the woman a block away, flee­ing the scene.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors tracked their ve­hi­cle us­ing sur­veil­lance footage and ul­ti­mate­ly re­cov­ered it.

Text mes­sages be­tween Richards and the al­leged shoot­er un­cov­ered a dis­pute over a mar­i­jua­na deal. Au­top­sy re­sults showed Richards died from a gun­shot wound to the arm and tor­so, which punc­tured his lungs.

The fe­male ac­com­plice was ar­rest­ed on Jan­u­ary 5, 2024, at John F Kennedy In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port as she tried to board a flight to Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Reg­is-Ash was ar­rest­ed in cen­tral Trinidad on Oc­to­ber 9.

A re­lease from the US Em­bassy in Port of Spain said fed­er­al agents from var­i­ous agen­cies worked close­ly with lo­cal po­lice to fa­cil­i­tate his ar­rest. —PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad (CMC)