Crown: Killer ate porridge just before fatal shooting

(CNS): George Orlando Senior (35) fortified himself with a bowl of porridge for breakfast, which he had picked up at McDonald’s, shortly before he shot and killed Divonte Alejandro Hernandez (25) outside Liquor 4 Less on Sound Way, George Town, on the morning of 29 September 2023. Barnaby Jameson KC, who is prosecuting the charge of murder on behalf of the crown, told a jury that Senior’s DNA and fingerprints were found inside the Honda Fit that carried him to the murder scene and on several items within it, including a styrofoam cup and spoon that had contained his breakfast.

Senior is accused of “executing” Hernadez, who was unarmed, in a “brazen planned murder” with a point-blank shot in broad daylight on the streets of the capital in front of his daughter as he sat at a picnic table talking to people outside the liquor store.

According to the prosecution, Bianca Vega, the mother of his child, helped Senior rent the Honda Fit that was used as the first of three getaway vehicles and evade the police for several weeks after the murder. Vega, who is accused of accessory after the fact, appeared in the dock last week alongside Senior.

Senior has denied the charges and told police in a prepared statement following his arrest that he had nothing to do with Hernadez’s murder, but he was afraid to speak to the police because of a number of factors, including fears for his own life and the lives of Vega and their child as threats had been made to him and his family.

The crown contends that Senior was the gunman for this audacious daylight murder at a busy intersection of the capital. Jameson said that DNA, suspicious articles such as leather gloves and ski masks, fingerprints on an illegally dark tint stuck on the rental car windows and other parts of the vehicle all point to Senior, who had refused to answer any of the investigators’ questions following his arrest to explain the incriminating evidence.

Jameson said that Senior sat in the passenger seat in the Honda Fit on the way to where he killed Hernandez, driven by Sean Austin Connolly Amaya (24). Connolly Amaya and Maurice Ray Chin were involved in the getaway and were “no ignorant bystanders” in this murder, but they are not on trial.

The crown says that the champagne Honda Fit was rented by Vega, who did not name anyone else as co-driver. It was fitted with stolen plates on the day of the murder as well as illegal tint. It was then abandoned in a parking lot not far from the scene of the shooting.

Senior then used at least two other vehicles, including one driven by Chin, to make his escape before going to ground at an apartment rented by Vega in East End, where the couple hid out before they were arrested in October, the crown contends.

Vega has denied assisting Senior, though the prosecution has suggested that messages between the individuals involved in this killing indicate she knew that Senior was wanted by police when she helped him dodge the law.

When she was interviewed, she said in a prepared statement that she did not trust the police after armed officers had pointed guns at her child, who was with her in her vehicle when she was stopped and arrested. During her interview, she also answered ‘no comment’ to the investigating officers’ questions.

The case continues this week in Grand Court with Justice Cheryll Richards presiding.