Mandeville fire losses top $20m as courts rule in police murder trial and St Thomas wounding appeal

A Saturday morning fire on Ward Avenue in Mandeville destroyed Newsman Fried Chicken and Known Traction Chill Spot, leaving two operators facing losses estimated at more than $20 million and nearby businesses without electricity. Firefighters from the Mandeville station were alerted about 4:15 a.m. and brought the blaze under control before cooling-down work ended shortly after 6 a.m.

Newsman Fried Chicken proprietor Adega Miller said his restaurant had opened only a month earlier and that he lost about $10 million in equipment, stock and cash. He said he was called around 4:25 a.m. and arrived to find the adjoining bar already destroyed, before discovering that his own premises had been burnt out inside. The cause remains under investigation.

In the Home Circuit Court in Kingston, Justice Sonia Bertram Linton rejected prosecutor Kathy-Ann Peck’s request to remove reporters while she made a special application in the murder trial of six police officers. Sergeant Steve Roy Mott, Corporal Donovan Fullerton and constables Andrew Smith, Sheldon Richards, Arrindell Ross and Richard Lynch are being tried over the January 12, 2013 shooting deaths of Matthew Lee, Hughcliffe Dyer and Demar Allen on Acadia Drive in Barbican, St Andrew. Fullerton also faces a false-statement charge linked to INDECOM.

Peck complained about media reporting and asked for privacy. The judge offered open court, a bench approach or chambers, and Peck chose chambers. Defence attorney Hugh Wildman, who was urged to attend, also complained that repeated late service of statements was prejudicing the defence. John Jacobs and Althea Grant-Copin are also defence counsel. The matter is to continue next week.

The Court of Appeal also upheld Carla Crooks’ unlawful wounding conviction but suspended her 18-month prison sentence for three years, with 12 months’ supervision. Crooks was convicted in the St Thomas Parish Court on May 14, 2024, arising from a January 1, 2023 attack on Wilma Leash involving Crooks and her parents, Carlene and Leroy Crooks.

The court accepted that Leash suffered a fractured skull, broken incisor, bruising and a swollen eye, and rejected Carla Crooks’ self-defence argument after reviewing video evidence. However, Justice Marcia Dunbar-Green, joined by Justices Paulette Williams and Nicole Simmons, found the sentence too different from those imposed on her co-accused, who were in their 70s. Leroy Equiano represented Crooks; Katrina Watson and Ashley Innis appeared for the Crown.