Mom weeps in witness box

A WOMAN wept uncontrollably on the witness-stand yesterday as she recalled the day three years ago when she saw her 14-year-old daughter’s partially nude body lying on a river bank near their home at Eccles Village, Rio Claro. Wiping away tears, a soft-spoken Debbie Nagessar sobbed, “the whole body was exposed. It didn’t have on any top and she was half-way naked. The shirt was pulled down as far as her knee. I saw marks on her back.” Nagessar’s daughter Kamla Joseph was strangled and her body found floating in the Nariva River on December 30, 2000. Clayton Felmin, 20, went on trial for Joseph’s murder yesterday at the  San Fernando First Criminal Assizes, before Justice Herbert Volney and a 12-member mixed jury. Acting Assistant Director of Public Prosecutions (South) Joan Honore-Paul informed the court that around 4.30 pm on December 29, 2000, Kamla Joseph left her home at Eccles Village, Rio Claro, never to return.

Joseph bought a pack of cigarettes and sweets at a nearby parlour and after she left, was last seen that day talking to Felmin. According to Honore-Paul, the next morning a villager went into his “bandhania” (a local seasoning garden), at Mahabalsingh Trace, followed the tracks across the road and discovered Joseph’s body floating in the Nariva River. An autopsy carried out on the body at the Forensic Science Centre, by Forensic Pathologist Dr Hughvon Des Vignes, revealed Joseph died of manual strangulation. The case continues on Monday.