I counted 52 stones in the home of mentally ill man - Police Investigator
Published:Thursday | November 30, 2017 | 12:00 AMLivern Barrett
A police investigator has testified that he saw more than 50 large stones inside the house where a mentally ill man was allegedly set upon and chopped to death by a St Ann woman, her husband, and three children.
According to Detective Sergeant Clinton Brady, the stones were scattered across the bed, dresser, what-not, and inside the unfinished two-room house in Coltart Grove, St Ann, where Stanley McLean lived at the time he was killed in July 2007.
Brady, who was giving evidence yesterday in the murder trial of Velma Deans, her husband Joseph, and their three sons - Jermaine, Dwight, and Richard - said he noticed that 25 glass louvre blades were missing from the window.
"Did you make any observation about the number of stones you saw in the house?" lead prosecutor Sharon Millwood-Moore asked the witness.
"I counted 52 large stones," Brady replied.
"Could you give Her Ladyship [presiding judge Justice Carol Lawrence Beswick] and the jury a description of these stones?" Millwood-Moore continued.
"These were big stones that could be handled by a human," the cop replied.
WHY DID YOU LIE?
Brady revealed, too, that he found a roll of electrical wire and a machete, with what appeared to be blood, inside the house.
His honesty was, however, called into question after he testified that he had instructed a subordinate to take the machete, along with a blood sample taken from McLean, to the Government Forensic Laboratory.
Defence attorney Ernest Smith pointed the police sergeant to a section of his sworn statement - given more than nine months after McLean's death - in which he said that the machete and blood samples were placed in sealed packages and "I escorted them to the forensic laboratory".
"Why did you lie to the judge and the jury that you gave them to Corporal Preddie to take to the government lab. Why have you lied?" Smith questioned, during cross-examination.
"I did not lie. I wrote the statement in a rush by the clerk of the court," he replied, making reference to the 2008 preliminary enquiry held in the St Ann Resident Magistrate Court.
Velma Deans, 65, her husband, and their three adult sons are on trial for allegedly killing McLean on July 6, 2007.
Audley McLean, the father of the mentally ill man, testified on Monday that he saw two of the Deans boys stoning his son's house after another resident indicated that he was inside.
A retired police sergeant, Valmore Morgan, also testified that Velma Deans went to the Claremont Police Station to report that Stanley McLean had stolen a piece of electrical wire from her house.