About 19 years after truck driver Joshua ‘Cabbage’ Pompey was acquitted of a murder charge, a man who was subsequently charged with Pompey’s murder and other related offenses, was freed on all counts.
Hanif ‘Ghandi’ Forbes, 41-year-old mason of Spring Village, Georgetown, was charged with murdering Pompey at O’Briens Village, Georgetown on January 22, 2022, discharging a loaded firearm with intent to injure, possession of a firearm without licenses, assaulting Pompey’s wife Lakeitha Harris-Pompey causing her bodily harm on January 21, 2022, and entering Harris-Pompey’s home on the same date and stealing one bottle of Gonsalves Black Wine valued EC$30, one bottle of Pure Heaven non-alcoholic wine value EC$25, and one bottle of Jamaican brandy valued EC$25.
Pompey’s body was found in his car next to his home at O’Brien Village in the early morning hours of January 22, 2022. He sustained a bullet wound to the head.
Forbes who had a sexual relationship with Pompey’s wife was subsequently arrested and charged.
However, Forbes walked free from the High Court on Tuesday after a 12-member Jury, comprised of eight women and four men, found him not guilty on all counts, following a trial which lasted about two weeks.
Speaking shortly after the acquittal, Forbes’ attorney Ronald Marks said, “Justice was served. It would have been frightening if the Jury had come back with a different verdict. This (verdict) has reassured my faith in the system. I walked an innocent man out of prison today, and I am satisfied”.
The Crown’s case relied heavily on the evidence of Harris-Pompey, the only witness for the Crown to testify seeing the unfolding of the events leading to the shooting death of Joshua Pompey around 12:05 a.m. on January 22, 2022. But Marks in his closing submissions argued that Harris-Pompey fabricated the story.
Marks referenced the evidence of surgical pathologist Ronald Child who said Pompey was shot from the left side, in contrast to the evidence of Harris-Pompey who told the Court that Forbes was standing to the right side of the vehicle in which Pompey was shot. Marks also argued that she said she saw Pompey with a long gun but according to Dr. Child’s evidence, the entry wound was only 1.2 cm, which Marks said was more consistent with a small caliber gun. The lawyer added that no firearm or spent shells were recovered.
Marks also referred to the evidence of the accused who told the Court that Harris-Pompey had told him the father of her first child used to beat her, and she purchased a gun and told the child’s father that she would shoot him if he ever hit her again.
Forbes’ in his defense to the Court said, “We started out as friends and we became intimate. Some sex happened at the house and sometimes she would call me, and we would go to a house at Glen and have sex. I did not shoot ‘Cabbage’, and I did not beat her (Harris-Pompey) up”.
Forbes, in response to questions from the Crown, said, “We were always having sex. She never told me she wanted to stop having sex with me because she was married. I did not kill ‘Cabbage’. I did not go in their house and remove drinks, and beat her up”, he insisted.
Forbes said that on the evening of January 21, 2022, he was at a bar playing pool, then went home. He said he was at home playing games, and Harris-Pompey kept messaging him. He said he never left the house again, and the following morning someone called him saying that Joshua Pompey was killed, and people were saying that he (Forbes) was the killer. Forbes called his mother Veronica John, and his son Duvani Williams, both of whom he lived with, to testify on his behalf.
On January 11, 2004, Pompey was freed of a murder charge, stemming from the shooting death of Wayde Durrant at Middle Street, Kingstown on June 11, 2003
SOURCE :THE VINCENTIAN