Murder accused says cops forced him to sign statement

MURDER accused Darrel Vincent told police he went to Raffick Kabul’s Rio Claro home and during a confrontation tied a towel around Kabul’s mouth. This was contained in a statement signed by the accused and read to the jury yesterday as Vincent’s murder trial continued in the San Fernando High Court. Vincent, represented by attorney Indra Ramoutar-Liverpool, instructed by Kevin Ratiram, is before Justice Paula Mae Weekes in the Second Criminal Assizes. When Vincent took the witness stand, he denied that he volunteered a statement to police but only signed the document police showed him because they promised to let him go home.

“Since morning I leave home. Nobody know where I gone. I was tired and hungry. All these officers coming and asking me questions. It was frustrating me”, Vincent explained to State Prosecutor Joan Paul-Honore under cross-examination. Vincent told the jury that at the time of Kabul’s murder on May 7, 1997, he was at his apartment at Lower Hillside, San Fernando, with his wife and newborn baby. The accused claimed he was in Rio Claro on the weekend before the murder and spent the weekend with his friend, Oral Steel. Vincent testified that he travelled to Rio Claro on the Saturday to take back his gold ID band which Steel had borrowed. The accused said Steel told him he pawned it in a club, but when he and Steel went to the club, they were unsuccessful in getting it back. He recalled that he stayed in Rio Claro until Sunday, and that Steel’s father gave him money “to behave myself, to hold out”.

Vincent told the court that on May 9, 1997, around  1am he was asleep in his underwear when police arrived in the yard and began to interrogate him. He said police allowed him to dress himself and he was then taken to the San Fernando CID, then later to the Rio Claro Police Station where he was handcuffed to a gas cylinder for several hours. He said he saw Oral Steel handcuffed in another room. Vincent told the court that in the evening, Sgt Wright showed him a document and asked him to sign it. When he refused, the accused said he was threatened. Vincent testified: “I told him I was not going through with that. He said ‘All yuh come up here to kill people. I go show yuh how we does kill people up here’.” Vincent said he signed the statement because the police promised that he would be free to go. Under cross-examination, Vincent said that he knew the police were investigating a murder and that he was a suspect when he signed the statement. Vincent said he did not complain of the threats to the Justice of the Peace, no to the magistrate when he appeared in court on the murder charge. “I told the magistrate about the gold band,” Vincent said.