Woman denies involvement in violence

(CNS): A West Bay woman who is charged in a gang-related case has denied being involved in any violence on the night that Daniel Bennett and Carlney Campbell were assault and shot outside Fete nightclub in February this year. Taking the witness stand in her own behalf, Tashika Mothen (29), who is charged with attempted murder in a joint enterprise, told a jury that she did not start any arguments with the victims and was not involved in, and did not see, any violence. She said her husband, Malik Mothen, who is also charged with attempted murder, did not have a gun with him.

“I didn’t see no form of violence that night, none at all,” she said.

Mothen said she was not around her husband all of the evening, as she had gone out with her girlfriends and he with his friends, but they had left together in the same car and he did not have a gun. She said that she was only aware of the violence when she heard shots ring out soon after she and her girlfriends had left the nightclub and were hanging outside, where they were  taking ‘selfies’ and videos to post on Snapchat.

Mothen denied being the one who had started an argument with Bennett, claiming that he was the one who had ranted at her. Because of this, after some time she had walked away. Tashika Mothen also denied claims by witnesses that Daniella Tibbetts, the fourth defendant in the case, had tried to pull her away from the argument she was having with Bennett. Mothen said that she and Tibbetts were “no kind of friends”.

She said she had seen her husband going towards the area where Bennett was, as there was a group of people who were leaving the club or smoking, but she denied making any signals to her husband about Bennett. She said she did not know where her husband was headed at that point, but she did not see him walk towards Bennett with a gun.

Mothen was shown the CCTV footage of her husband and their co-defendant, Kashwayen Hewitt, walking back and forth. However, she told the court that she had not noticed them because she and her friend were absorbed with taking pictures and were not paying much attention to the comings and goings around them, before they heard the shots and ran away from the area.

The Mothens and Hewitt are charged with attempted murder in relation to the violence that occurred that night, including attempts to shoot Bennett and the shooting of Campbell, who sustained a serious wound. Hewitt and Malik Mothen are also charged with possession of an unlicensed firearm, to which Hewitt has pleaded guilty.

Daniella Tibbetts was charged with possession of an unlicensed firearm after the police found the Colt 45 that was used to shoot Campbell hidden in the toilet cistern in her West Bay apartment.

The crown’s case is that the defendants were involved in a feud with Bennett because of his friendship with a man Mothen believes shot her and two other women in another violent gang-related incident in Field Square, George Town, in 2015.

The case continues.