Just before midday, today, Trenton Smith, 29, a resident of Sarstoon Street, was executed in an upstairs wooden house on Johnson Street. By all indications, the shooter went for him all the way up the stairs and shot him while he was sitting in a chair.
The time of his slaying, eyewitnesses say, is very telling as he was just acquitted, in his second trial, on July 26, 2011, of the 2007 murder of Tyrone Castillo. In 2009, his first trial ended in a hung jury; the key witness had testified that he saw Smith shoot Castillo. Smith called an alibi witness, who said that he (Smith) was home at the time of the murder.
In his retrial last month, the key witness who made the testimony in the first trial, and who gave police a sworn statement, denied all of that, saying that he ran after he heard the first shot; he told the court, he didn’t see who killed Castillo.
As a result, the case unraveled, and Smith was set free.
Witnesses and residents refused to comment, but information to Amandala is that Smith was at the house socializing with a friend; he reportedly frequents the house. That’s when the gunman walked off Johnson Street, went up the stairs, and with a barrage of bullets, shot Smith dead.
Police say that he suffered gunshot wounds to the right side of the face below the ear, the left side of the neck, and the right shoulder.
The gunman quickly escaped, leaving a dying Smith behind. Police arrived soon after, but they could only begin to process the scene; Smith was already dead by that time, still in the chair where he was sitting when his assailant shot him. The friend has been detained by police for questioning; no information has been given about his statement to the police of the events which led to Smith’s murder.
It is understandably a time of grieving for the family, and they have refused to comment to the media.