Witness accused of ‘malicious’ false allegations

(CNS): Defence lawyer Oliver Blunt QC accused the crown’s key witness of “quite maliciously” making up an allegation against a police officer, claiming he had conveyed a threatening message from his client, Roger Deward Bush. He also argued that because Nikkieta Ebanks hated Bush, she had made up a false narrative that he had confessed to killing his son, Shaquille Demario Bush, in November 2019. Blunt spent a day and a half cross-examining Bush’s former girlfriend, who is currently in witness protection, accusing her of lying.

The prosecution had argued that Bush killed his son because of his jealous obsession, believing that the daughter he had with Ebanks was actually Shaquille’s child. Blunt said this was “absolute rubbish” and Bush had never taken the rumours seriously. Ebanks agreed that the rumour was rubbish but said that Bush had believed it.

Blunt revealed that his client grew and sold ganja for a living and pressed the witness about what he maintained was her false evidence about the night Shaquille was murdered. He accused her of knowing that his client was dealing with drug business that night, which is why he had told her not to come to his home on Daisy Lane.

He accused her of spinning a fictitious narrative, blaming Bush for the killing because of her hatred for him after his violence and infidelity over the fifteen years they were together. He read out to the court phone messages between Ebanks and her girlfriends, in which she had clearly expressed that hatred for Bush.

But Ebanks stuck to her evidence and said that Bush had confessed and had threatened her. She said she had seen him with a table full of guns and that he had traumatized her and her young daughter.

Blunt accused Ebanks of making up the “quite malicious” allegation that a police officer had threatened her on behalf of Bush while she was in custody. He said that was when she had begun to weave this fictitious narrative that Bush was the killer, even though he had nothing to do with his son’s murder. But she stated emphatically that it was true and while she wished none of it had happened, it did.

Blunt continued to press the witness over the threat allegation, pushing her to admit it was false and that there was no incident in the cell. He said the truth was that Bush had never met with the officer at the liquor store in George Town, as she had claimed. He said the officer had categorically denied the allegations and argued that the story was made up because she hated Bush.

Ebanks persistently spoke of the abuse she suffered and remained steadfast that what she eventually told the police about the murder and the threats made by the officer was all true.

Blunt asked her about the many other people who might have wanted to kill Shaquille and what she knew about them, as he questioned Ebanks on a number of different issues, trying to shake her credibility.

He raised the issue of her own threatening behaviour towards young women with whom Bush had affairs. He asked her about threatening to shoot one woman and confronting another at the check-out in Foster’s, a girl who was just 17 when Bush reportedly began having an affair with her.

Ebanks denied threatening anyone, and although she had been arrested, she said the case was dropped. She denied causing a fight in the supermarket but said she had made a sarcastic remark to the girl about reminding “grandpa to take his medicine”. This was a reference to Bush’s age because she could see he was trying to do to this young girl what he had done to her.

As Blunt attempted to shake both the motive for the killing, as set out by the crown, and the credibility of the witness, he also questioned her about a relationship she had with Caine Thomas, another crown witness, who was shot and killed in April on Seven Mile Beach.

Blunt implied that Ebanks’ connection to Thomas had led her to go to the police in order to get into witness protection and gain money. Ebanks said she had begun dating Thomas in January 2021 but had met him more than a year before that, in November 2019 when she was arrested and taken to the detention centre. She told the court she had even told Bush about meeting him and that she liked him.

But Thomas was not the person that introduced her to Joseph Wright, an RCIPS detective with whom she eventually began to meet to discuss what she knew about Shaquille’s murder. Thomas had been in witness protection (though he had chosen not to follow the rules) after giving evidence against his co-conspirators in a violent home invasion.

She also dismissed the idea that she had benefited in any way from being in witness protection. She said she was a qualified bookkeeper and had always been able to earn a good salary. Before she had to leave her job to be placed in witness protection she was earning more than CI$70,000 per year, Ebanks said, but now she received an allowance of just $1,750 per month, a far cry from her previous earnings.