Gaylia Flashy, 47, has already had a terrible year by any measure, with her son Richard Flores, 19, accused of inciting panic on Carnival Saturday, September 6, by allegedly throwing a grenade into a crowd of spectators on Princess Margaret Drive.
Now she has to wonder who in fact killed her older son Hubert, 25, known as “Heavy D”, on Christmas Day 2005. The man accused of doing so, Guatemalan Miguel Angel Orrego, 46, of San Pedro Town, was acquitted of murder by a jury of six men and six women in the courtroom of Justice Adolph Lucas around 3:30 this afternoon.
Hubert, a DJ who worked mainly at Big Daddy’s Nightclub in San Pedro, was enjoying a night out with his pregnant girlfriend, Christina Coc, at the night spot on Christmas Eve, December 24, 2005, when a fight broke out inside the nightclub involving the couple and another woman, in which some Hispanic men got involved.
The nightclub’s security guard, Jonas Sayntel, as a result of the fight, apparently put out Hubert and Christina, and then another fight broke out near the food stand outside the nightclub between Hubert and the same group of Hispanic men, joined by others, allegedly including the accused, with as many as seven persons involved.
After the scuffle, “Heavy D” took off in the direction of the park, the group chasing after him.
By 4:30 a.m. Heavy D was dead, stabbed once in the chest area, the wound penetrating his heart and causing his left lung to collapse.
At the time, family members said he had been mistreated by police and beaten.
The trial of Orrego began last Tuesday, September 23 before Justice Lucas. Senior Crown Counsel Cecil Ramirez presented the prosecution’s case, while attorney Michael Peyrefitte represented Orrego.
According to defense attorney Peyrefitte, there were two key gaps in the prosecution’s case: 1) they failed to present a single eyewitness who saw Orrego stab Flashy, or prove that Orrego wanted to harm him; and 2) they could not produce a murder weapon for the court, as requested by the jury before they went into deliberation.
The prosecution called a security guard for a pawnshop around the corner on Pescador Drive, Eladio Terry, who claimed to have spoken to the accused both before he went to Big Daddy’s, as he alleged Orrego told him, and after he returned with what appeared to be bloodstains on his shirt.
Terry, who said he had known Orrego for some time, claimed Orrego told him he had stabbed someone twice, allegedly when he returned for the bicycle he had left with Terry when he went to Big Daddy’s earlier. Orrego, according to Terry, never said directly to him if it was Flashy he was referring to, or why he had stabbed someone, and Terry apparently never asked, though he claimed he didn’t believe him.
Justice Lucas noted that Terry had told police at the time that Orrego supposedly admitted to three stabbings in his conversation with Terry that night, and apparently confused the time they had met on the mainland (in 1998) with when they met again in San Pedro (two years before the stabbing).
Michael Peyrefitte had made a no-case submission before Justice Lucas on Friday, alleging that Orrego had no case to answer, but Justice Lucas ruled against him and allowed the trial to continue. Orrego chose to remain silent when he was asked to present his defense, but in speaking for his client during closing arguments, Peyrefitte submitted that the “possibilities and circumstances” of Orrego killing Flashy were “not enough” for a murder conviction.