BELIZE CITY, Tues. Oct. 1, 2019– An accused murderer, Kenyon Dominguez, 28, who has been awaiting his day in court for the past 7 years after police charged him with the June 2012 murder of Keith Lewis, 24, walked out of the Supreme Court of Justice Colin Williams yesterday, Monday, after the judge ruled, in the trial by judge without jury, to accept a no-case-to-answer submission from Dominguez’s attorney, Kareem Musa.
Police brought the murder charge against Dominguez a full seven months after Lewis was gunned down in the Lake Independence area of the city. Lewis’ shooting had all the hallmarks of a gang hit.
On Tuesday, June 12, 2012 police found the body of Keith Lewis in a swampy lot on Roches Street. Lewis’ body had gunshot wounds in the upper left side of the chest and upper left side of the back, upper left leg and upper right leg. Lewis had been murdered a full 12 hours before his body was discovered.
At the time of the murder, police had reported, Lewis was standing in yard on Roches Street along with three other men when his assailant approached them from the direction of McKay Boulevard and opened fire on them.
Lewis and the three men ran in different directions, as the gunman sprayed bullets from what neighbors said sounded like an automatic weapon.
It was not until the following morning that Lewis’ body was discovered. The word in the streets was that Lewis was killed as an act of revenge for a shooting that had occurred the year before in July 2011, when Frank Sinclair, Jr., was shot on McKay Boulevard.
At the trial, the Crown’s evidence was led by Crown Counsel Shanice Lovell. The prosecution’s case, however, fell apart when the main witness, John Grinage, who had given a statement to police in 2012, in which he had identified Dominguez as the shooter, failed to identify the shooter on the witness stand.
Lovell had applied to the court to treat the witness as a hostile witness, but Justice Williams did not accept the application. The Crown was also unable to get the witness’ written statement admitted into the evidence against the accused man, leaving the Crown no option but to close its case after the witness was excused from the witness stand.
Musa seized upon the fact that the Crown had failed to prove its case against his client and made a no-case-to-answer submission.
Justice Williams upheld the no-case-to-answer submission and Dominguez was allowed to walk free from the murder indictment.