Wyatt Anderson, 32, accused of the November 2008 murder of ADM Belize Mills worker Robert Brown, 27, was this afternoon acquitted of a murder charge by a jury of seven women and five men in the court of Justice Adolph Lucas, but was convicted of the alternative charge of manslaughter.
Anderson, who was defended by attorney Ernest Staine, inflicted a single stab wound to Brown on Racoon Street just after midnight on November 22, 2008, during a deadly struggle between them. The case was prosecuted by Senior Crown Counsel Yohhanseh Cave.
The incident was caused by a previous altercation between Anderson’s sister, Nekia, and Brown, a devout Rastafarian, earlier in the evening, when the young woman challenged Brown and upset his drink of stout. He, in turn, allegedly tossed some of the drink back on her, and she went storming off.
Wyatt Anderson came to the area on a bicycle a few minutes later, and Brown went to meet him. They began to struggle, and during the fight Brown was allegedly stabbed.
Pathologist Dr. Mario Estradabran testified at the trial that the stab penetrated four inches deep into the soft tissue surrounding the heart area, and penetrated the sheath separating the ribcage from other organs (but not the heart itself). Death was caused by internal bleeding occasioned by the wound.
In Dr. Estradabran’s view, the force needed to penetrate the area was “mild to moderate,” though he could not make any precise assessment of the type of force that was used by Anderson.
The primary witness for the prosecution was Detective Constable (DC) Jeremy McCullough, who was driving his pickup on Racoon Street headed for Central American Boulevard that Saturday night when near the corner of Racoon and Curassow Streets, he saw two young men apparently fighting, and a “shiny object” (later identified as a knife) between them, with one man holding its handle, the other the blade. There were several other persons present.
The man holding the handle, who DC McCullough described as being six feet tall, brown-skinned, with dreads, in a long-sleeved white t-shirt, was later identified by the officer in court as Anderson; the other man, in a gray shirt, was apparently Brown.
The constable said that, as he turned on the vehicle’s high beams and prepared to step out of the car with his licensed .38 revolver, he heard Brown tell Anderson: “Let me go, caz yu done juk me aready.”
Anderson allegedly replied, “I noh wahn hear, caz you done mi di mess wid my sista.”
The officer said he intervened and ordered both of them to drop the knife before the count of 3 or he would shoot. They complied and Anderson started walking away. The officer pursued him, but before he could make contact, he heard a sound behind him and saw that Brown had fallen to the ground.
He turned back to render assistance and took Brown to the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital, where he would later die of his injuries. The officer later returned with a superior and recovered the knife, which Anderson allegedly dropped in the drain as he left.
Interestingly, while photographs of the knife in question were tendered as evidence, the actual knife was not brought to court, allegedly because of internal difficulties with the forensics lab.
An identification parade was to have been held, but Anderson allegedly refused to participate, which is his right.
In the course of trial, however, he did not deny having an altercation with Brown that night or being in the area at the time
Anderson’s account of events, told from the witness stand, included the part of the confrontation that had allegedly occurred before Constable McCullough’s arrival. He said he was told by a childhood friend as he was leaving his cousin’s studio that night that someone had spilt a drink on his sister, and went to check that report. He met Brown and a group of three other men and two women, and tried to ask Brown what had happened.
But before he could do so, Anderson alleged, Brown came at him with the knife and started to make stabbing motions at him, asking, “You wahn some too?” They then got locked in a fierce struggle, as Brown tried to drag Anderson to the side of the street, and Anderson fought to stay in the middle of the road, to avoid getting stabbed, and to try to take away the knife.
Anderson told the court that he eventually landed on his back on the street, but was able to get back up and continue fighting. At this point he said he told Brown to “let go of the knife.”
Brown allegedly replied, “I dih deal wid yuh sista.”
Anderson said he then told him that the police were coming, and as Brown asked, “Police?” Constable McCullough pulled up. On his order, they separated from each other and dropped the knife and he claimed to have told the officer what Brown had tried to do to him and shown him the knife before throwing it onto the ground near the drain and going home.
Only later on, he said, was he informed that Brown had been stabbed, and later on that he had died, and insisted that he was not the cause of it.
Anderson called one witness in support of his testimony, Reginald Garoy, who testified that at midnight November 21, 2008, he was buying food on Racoon Street when he spotted a young man coming on a bicycle and then another man meeting him and saw a struggle between them which ended when a third man arrived and tried to break up the incident using his firearm — without identifying Anderson, Brown, or Constable McCullough.
Three issues were raised on defense: (1) accidental death – in which case, if the jury believed that Anderson was trying to get the knife away from Brown in the course of a fight which he says started after he was approached by Brown, and that this led to Brown being stabbed, it would be a lawful act and considered not to be a crime, making him not guilty; (2) self-defense, in similar circumstances; and (3) provocation, occasioned by the manner of Brown’s allegedly approaching Anderson.
The jury retired at 11:47 a.m. today after Justice Lucas issued his summation of the case and returned at 4:13 p.m., 4 hours and 26 minutes later.
Wyatt Anderson will be sentenced on February 10, 2011. Nekia Anderson, who had been named by police as a suspect and co-conspirator, went on the run after the incident and has not been found to date.