Elliott murder was ‘robbery gone wrong’ says crown

(CNS): Candia James-Malcolm, the deputy director of public prosecutions, told a jury that Harry Elliott (63), a former prison officer who was gunned down at a numbers shop in George Town on 25 April 2022, was murdered during “a robbery gone horribly wrong”. As she opened the crown’s case against Justin Kyle Jackson and Eric Brian Williams Soto on Friday, James-Malcolm said Elliott was killed by a single gunshot wound to the head at close range.

Jackson and Soto have both pleaded not guilty to murder. They admit that they were the two men who were caught on CCTV in the entrance of the illegal gambling shop on School Road but claim they did not intend to kill anyone and that the gun was fired by accident.

Elliott was shot and killed moments after he had spent just a few dollars on numbers at the shop, which is run by retired police officer Keron Cupid, the first witness to give evidence in the case.

He told the court that on the night of the killing and just before the incident, he had released the door lock to allow Elliot to leave. Just as he did so, two men came through the door. One, who was unmasked, immediately pulled a gun, racked the slide and declared, “You know what time it is? This is a robbery!” Then a shot was fired, and Elliott fell to the ground.

Cupid said there had been a second masked man behind the first who did not appear to be armed and had barely made it inside the shop before both men fled. The incident was partially caught on Cupid’s CCTV, which was set inside the foyer of the building, with his gambling shop on one side and a barbershop on the other. That footage showed that the entire incident happened in a matter of seconds.

According to the footage, Jackson and Soto entered the building and tried the door to the barbershop before approaching the gambling shop door. The camera shows Jackson pulling the door open, stepping inside, and then seconds later backing straight out and firing the gun. Soto never got past the threshold of the gambling shop door before they both fled through the front entrance of the building.

Under cross-examination by Sallie Bennett-Jenkins KC from the UK, who is representing Jackson, Cupid confirmed that he had told the police that Jackson had a bewildered look on his face when he came into the shop announcing the robbery, and that the look was almost apologetic. “To me, he looked as though he didn’t mean for it to happen,” Cupid told the court.

When she outlined the details of the case, James-Malcolm explained to the jury that police investigations had led them to Jackson fairly quickly as his face was caught on CCTV and his DNA was at the scene. Although Jackson had initially evaded arrest, he handed himself in a few weeks later. After he was arrested, he was interviewed, but he refused to answer any questions from the police and gave a no-comment interview.

Police investigations led detectives to identify Soto as the second masked man at the scene, but when he was arrested, he said he knew nothing at all about the murder.

Police tracked down the getaway car using security CCTV footage from other businesses in the area as well as the national CCTV network. Officers worked out that the men had been dropped off in the same car as the one that picked them up, and soon learned that the car had been driven by Caine Thomas, who was murdered a few days after the robbery. Thomas, who had been a crown witness in an infamous violent home invasion case in 2017, was gunned down on Seven Mile Beach in the early hours of Thursday, 28 April. His murder remains unsolved.

As James-Malcom wrapped up her presentation of the prosecution’s case against the two men for murder, she said that “the convergence of the evidence painted the picture of an armed robbery gone horribly wrong”. She said the two men had “together hatched a plan to rob the numbers shop”, stressing the crown’s position that this is a case of joint enterprise and that both men are equally culpable for Elliott’s murder.

James-Malcolm said they had entered together, with Jackson carrying the gun and Soto wearing a full-face covering. Jackson had readied the gun as he entered the room and announced, “This is a robbery.” He had then fired at Elliott, who was going out as they were coming into the gambling shop.

She also told the jury that after they were arrested, neither man gave an account to the police about what happened.

The case continues.