Lakeitha Harris-Pompey, the wife of murder victim Joshua ‘Cabbage’ Pompey, was the only witness for the Crown to claim seeing the unfolding of the drama which led to the shooting death of her husband, around 12:05am on January 22, 2022.
Harris-Pompey told the Court, during the recent murder trial, that she had a sexual relationship with the accused Hanif ‘Ghandi’ Forbes who, on Tuesday, was acquitted of that murder and other related offenses.
She said she and Forbes were friends then they became lovers before she got married to Joshua-Pompey in 2020, and her sexual relationship with Forbes continued even after she got married to Pompey.
She described her marriage as “on and off” because “her (husband) was seeing different people, and I was seeing Hanif Forbes.”
She said that she wanted to quit the marriage but she and her husband saw a counsellor, and he advised them to work things out. She said that she had told Forbes she was going to get married, and he told her she could do what she wanted. She said her relationship with Forbes ended around October 2021 because “he used to be acting up”.
Harris-Pompey spoke of an incident between the night of January 21, 2021 and the early morning of January 22, 2022, while her husband was not at home. The children were sleeping and she was watching movies. She recalled hearing something drop, and she got up to see what had happened.
“My white board fell. They were drinks on the table, and they were gone. It was a black wine, a Pure Heaven and a Jamaican Brandy. I saw Hanif putting the drinks through the burglar bars of the window. I saw his head and shoulder. He pulled the curtain to take the drinks off the table. I say Hanif, why are you removing ‘Cabbage’ drinks. He just walked away”, Harris-Pompey testified.
“I went after him and met him in the yard. I tell him give me the drinks. He start to choke me. I start to fist him off, and I got away from him and ran back into the house. He threw me down in the couch and start choking me. I flip over the couch, and I try to run out the kitchen, but could not make it”, Harris-Pompey added.
According to her, “Ghandi (Forbes) grabbed me the same time and start to beat me in my face. I began to scream and my kids woke up. I say ‘Ghandi’ you going to beat me up in front of the kids them, and I ran out the front door. I was frighten. I locked the door. It was around 11pm (January 21, 2021).
“I went into my bedroom, and looked out the window. I saw him (Forbes) walking fast going down the road, then I took my phone and called ‘Cabbage’. I told him that ‘Ghandi’ came into the yard, and took his drinks, and gone with them”.
Harris-Pompey said her husband said OK, and hung up, but while she was peeping through the window awaiting her husband’s arrival, she saw Forbes coming up the road with a gun in his hand.
“It (gun) was long and black. As he got closer he put the gun on a wall, and jumped over the wall to come in my yard, then he go by the window to the garage. I came out of the bedroom. I called ‘Cabbage’ to tell him (Pompey) don’t come up here, because Forbes was in the yard with a gun”.
Harris-Pompey said Forbes told her, “I go kill you and ‘Cabbage’ mudder —— today”. She said Forbes was pounding the gun in the house through a window for a short while.
At this point, her husband arrived and came out of his car. She did not see where Forbes went as she had gone back to her bedroom window. She later saw Forbes coming from the direction of Dickson, and he pointed the gun at her husband. She added that Forbes also fired a bullet on the ground.
According to the woman her husband, who was already inside the house, wanted to go back outside and she told him not to because Forbes had a gun. But her husband insisted that he was going back outside to park his vehicle. She said she heard a loud explosion and when she peeped through the window, she saw her husband’s car reversing slowly and then it stopped. She said Forbes was pointing the gun to her husband’s car. She screamed repeatedly, and saw Forbes run up in a gap and disappeared.
The police whom she had called earlier returned the call, and she told them it looked like something happened to her husband. When she went down to the car she saw what appeared to be blood on her husband’s face, and he was unresponsive. She said it was after 12 midnight.
Under cross-examination by Forbes’ lawyer Ronald Marks, Harris-Pompey said she ended the relationship with Forbes because she wanted to spend more time with her children. She said she always knew her husband was cheating on her, and the only person she could have taken her problems to was Forbes. She could not remember when was the last time she had sex with Forbes, but said it was long before December, 2021
SOURCE : THE VINCENTIAN
