Although one of the principal witnesses in the trial of two men allegedly involved in the July 7, 2001 murder of Nurse Joan Lunn cannot be located, the Crown closed its case shortly before 1 p.m. on Monday.
Before asking leave of Presiding Justice Anita Allen to close the case, Prosecutor Francis Cumberbatch told the court also that a second witness, a female, could not be contacted.
Kenton Brown is charged, by means of unlawful harm, with intentionally and unlawfully causing the death of Nurse Lunn over 18 months ago. On the same date it is alleged that he attempted to murder and conspired to murder Anthony Saunders who was 34-years-old at the time of the shooting.
Mr Saunders cannot be located to testify in the case. Nurse Lunn was tending to him when she received a fatal gunshot wound to the chest at about 10: 40 p.m. on the mentioned date.
Brown is charged with murder, conspiracy to commit murder and attempted murder.
A second accused in the matter, Monte Thompson, is also being tried on the charge that he conspired to murder Mr Saunders on the mentioned date.
On Monday morning, as the trial moved into its third week,
before a 12-member jury consisting of four men and eight women, Vanria Dixon, Saunders’ sister, was the first witness called to the stand.
She testified that on July 6, 2001, she saw her brother in the emergency room section of the Rand Memorial Hospital on a gurney.
The witness said that he was being drip-fed and had blood coming from his leg.
Around 1.30 a.m. on July 7, 2001, she continued, he was admitted to room number three in the Private Surgical Ward of the Princess Margaret Hospital.
She said that she left the hospital briefly to tend to another matter. Returning a short time later, she said, she “dozed off” in the lobby area, but was awakened by loud noises.
“All I heard was this loud, Pow! Pow! that sounded like fireworks,” she said, after which she saw a man dressed in camouflage clothes and wearing a ski mask go by.
Mrs. Dixon said that she saw smoke coming from the room, and when she entered it, there was blood everywhere, with her brother, Saunders, on the floor groaning, and the nurse, who appeared to be dead, bleeding from her chest.
Under cross-examination by Mr. Hilton, she said that about eight persons, mostly friends and family members, visited her brother that night, but she could not identify the person who passed her in the lobby.
“He was going out the lobby door and he had something like a cell phone in his hand,” she said, and noticed that the man had a limp.
She identified her brother’s room as the third one past the glass door entrance at Private Surgical.
Perry Peter Williams, a security guard, who the prosecution stated they initially had some difficulty contacting, was the last witness to testify. He said that on July 7, 2001 he was employed by Maximum Security, the company which had been contracted to provide security at PMH.
Mr Williams said he “was stationed at Maternity Ward,” when he learned that a nurse had been shot.
He described the maternity ward as being located west of the lobby, with Private Surgical situated east of the lobby entrance of the hospital. He said that he did not go to the room, but before the shooting he spoke to two men who had entered the hospital.
After he spoke with them for about a minute, the security guard said, the two men headed in the direction of the private surgical ward.
He said that he estimated the weight of each man as being just over 200 pounds, with the first one about six feet tall, slender, and fair-skinned, and the second about five feet six inches tall.
Mr. Williams said that he could identify no one at a police identification parade resembling either of the men he saw.
He never saw the face of the shorter of the men who entered the hospital on the night of the murder, he said.
Mr Cumberbatch, assisted by Neil Braithwaite, represents the Crown, while Langton Hilton represents Mr. Brown. Mr Simeon Brown is appearing on behalf of Mr. Thompson.
The case will resume at 10 a.m. today.
By Jimenita Swain, The Nassau Guardian
