Russell Norville recalled to a court on Tuesday that he had just gone to lie down when he heard two loud bangs. Moments later, he was told that his son Graeme was dead.
He was one of the first witnesses to testify, in the No. 3 Supreme Court, in the trial of the man accused of murdering his son on February 16, 2019. Kadeem O’Brian Clarke, 24 of Johnson Road, Workman’s, St George is charged with the shooting death of Graeme Norville at Rock Hall in the same parish.
The deceased’s father told the 12-member jury and Justice Carlisle Greaves that he had seen his son that Saturday morning leaving his parents’ home which was next door. Around 11 a.m., he went to rest and “no sooner did I get on the bed than I heard a couple of loud bangs”.
“I lay down for a few seconds and something didn’t feel right and I got up and went to the back door,” he testified, adding that at the time he saw some people getting into cars parked on the open lot behind his home and a few walking down the track next to his house as people “dispersed”.
“I heard chatter…. About a minute later, a guy ran to the fence shouting and telling me my son was dead. I think I asked him what happened or something like that. Then another guy came to the fence and said my son’s brains were out there in the road,” the father recalled.
Norville said he shouted to his sister-in-law and niece who were standing on the balcony of their nearby home that Graeme was dead.
“I stood there in shock and called the police after I composed myself,” he recollected, adding that he gave a man a sheet to cover his son’s body with.
Norville admitted that he did not go outside. “I couldn’t,” he said.
Also taking the witness stand was Graeme’s mother Debra Norville, who said that earlier that morning, she gave her son permission to borrow her car to go to St George.
She received a call around noon from his uncle’s wife and went to their home in Walkers where she was told the tragic news.
She then walked to the area “a stone’s throw behind his father’s house” and saw the body of her only son covered with a sheet.
“I removed the sheet and confirmed that it was Graeme…. He was still warm and I kissed him, told him I loved him and that I was there,” she said, describing feeling numb and as though she was having an “out-of-body experience”.
“It was unreal, the grief was profound,” she told the court, adding that two days later she went to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital’s morgue to formally identify the body.
Earlier in the proceedings, police photographer Roger Barrow also gave evidence.
Director of Public Prosecutions Donna Babb-Agard SC, Principal State Counsels Romario Straker and Kevin Forde, and State Counsel Treann Knight are prosecuting the case, while Senior Counsel Angella Mitchell-Gittens is representing the accused man.
The trial continues on Wednesday.
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