Cops warned of threats before daylight attack
Scene of stabbing incident 16 June 2015
(CNS): A jury of four women and three men heard the details Monday of the crown’s case against David Bodden for the attempted murder and wounding of Blake Barrell (31) from West Bay and watched the CCTV footage of the daylight attack on the streets of the capital last June. Prosecutors said that just minutes before the attack, Bodden left the George Town Police Station, where he had given a statement that Barrell and another man, Jose “Pito” Sanchez, had threatened to kill him more than once.
Bodden claimed to have been threatened once at his workplace, the Bodden Funeral Home, and on a second occasion in the Bodden Road area of George Town.
The jury was told that after Bodden made his report, the police followed him from the station so that he could take them to the location where some of the threats had been made. But in a bizarre sequence of events, Bodden spotted Barrell en route, with the officers in tow, and later told them that, as Barrell had passed him in his car, he had shown Bodden ‘the gun finger’, and that’s when the defendant turned his car around and chased after Barrell.
The police, still behind Bodden, also turned and continued following him as the feuding men engaged in a short car chase along Fort Street in the heart of George Town. After Bodden rammed Barrell’s vehicle off the road by Butterfield House, Barrell jumped out of his car and began to run, but Bodden ran after him and caught up with the man he claimed had been threatening him. Soon afterwards, Barrel received a serious neck injury.
The police officers on his tail grabbed Bodden and arrested him and the victim was taken to the hospital. The weapon used to cut Barrell was later found at the scene. Witnesses on the streets and nearby offices got a full view of the fight and described the incident like “something from a movie” .
The court heard how the feud between the two men stemmed from the trial and acquittal of Sanchez for the murder of Special Olympian, Solomon “Solly” Webster. Barrell was charged with assisting Sanchez to evade the law, while David Bodden had been accused of witness tampering during the trial. Sanchez walked away from that murder charge weeks before Bodden’s attack on Barrell after he was acquitted by a judge.
Barrell was never tried in relation to the accessory allegations as charges were dropped by the crown.
The trial continues.
Related story: Judge throws out murder case
