A public service vehicle (PSV) driver testified on Monday that he saw Kemar Gooding chasing a man in the Constitution River Terminal who later “juck” him with something before running off.
Testifying in the murder trial of Jamar Ricardo Watson in Supreme Court No. 4, Korey Marshall said he was driving along the road to exit the van stand when he saw Gooding, who he knew as a conductor named Mar, running behind a man.
He said the two ran past the stalls and towards the construction site where the terminal was being built. Marshall recalled that the assailant went inside the construction site before stopping behind the gate at the entrance with Gooding still in pursuit.
“But then I see Mar fall down on his back…and the fella approached and stood up over him and I see he pull out something – a shiny object – and just juck Mar once,” he testified, adding that the assailant ran off into the construction site.
He said Gooding was about eight feet from the other man when they reached the site, and he tried to get up after his attacker ran away, but fell again. Marshall stated that he could not see exactly where Gooding had been wounded.
The driver told the court that four other men arrived on the scene from the van stand, and they, along with other persons on the site, began to throw rocks at one another. He said a policeman ran to the scene.
Two other conductors then picked up Gooding and placed him in Marshall’s ZR, and they took him to the nearby Queen Elizabeth Hospital (QEH). The witness later found out that Gooding had died.
Questioned by Deputy Director of Public Prosecutions Alliston Seale S.C. as to whether he knew the assailant or could recall anything about him, the witness replied in the negative.
During the cross-examination by defence attorney Safiya Moore, Marshall said that when he saw the two men running towards the construction site, he allowed his vehicle to “roll forward” to observe what was going on, before coming to a stop since his conductor knew Gooding.
He stated that after dropping the victim to the hospital, he returned to work but received a call to head to the police station a few hours later, just after 12 p.m.
“I am suggesting to you that you did not see the person who was running in front of Mar turn around and stab him,” Moore put it to the witness.
“I disagree,” Marshall stated.
Last Friday, Gooding’s mother testified that she rushed to the QEH after receiving a call that her son had been taken there.
Harriet Griffith told the 12-member jury that she was in a van on her way to Bridgetown around 9:30 a.m. when she got the call. She recalled that she disembarked by Purity Bakeries in Lower Collymore Rock and ran to the hospital where two police officers took her into a consultation room with a doctor who told her that her 23-year-old son had died.
Griffith said she was taken into another room where she saw his body.
“He was covered from his toes up to his chest. I held onto him,” she tearfully recounted, adding that she pulled the sheet down and saw dressing on the left side of his body by his heart. Griffith said she then contacted Gooding’s father and other relatives.
Asked by Seale about her son’s character, she described him as “obedient, loving and respectable”.
Watson, 36, of School Gap, Hindsbury Road, St Michael, is charged with killing Gooding, of Ellerton, St George, on March 27, 2018.
The trial continues on Wednesday.
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