Victim accused of perjury in attempted manslaughter case

January 24, 2013 11:16 AM

PHILIPSBURG--The Prosecutor's Office asked for seven years Wednesday against a 25-year-old man, suspected of having committed attempted manslaughter in shooting his ex-girlfriend on October 3, 2012.

 
The victim, a 26-year-old woman, was arrested this week on suspicion of having committed perjury in providing a false statement to protect her former partner.
 
Judge Tamara Tijhuis will give her decision in the attempted manslaughter case on February 13. The perjury case will be heard at a later date.
 
The woman with initials S.S. was arrested by the police to be heard as a suspect and to testify in the case against her ex-boyfriend on Wednesday. She will be released no later than today, Thursday, after the police have taken the woman's statement in the perjury case.
 
The woman had initially been summoned to appear in Court on January 9, but she did not show up. Because the Prosecutor's Office considered her statements as crucial to the case against suspect J.O.M, Prosecutor Gonda van der Wulp requested of the Court a suspension, so that the woman could be questioned concerning her dubious statements.
 
The woman had provided the police with a detailed and extensive statement of what had transpired in her home on A.Th. Illidge Road. She was shot after a bedroom-fight with the man with whom she had been in a relationship.
She said she had been hit with the butt of a gun and punched in the face during the fight, which ended after she was shot in the leg, close to the groin.
 
Led before the Judge of Instruction, however, the woman had retracted this statement and had said not suspect J.O.M. was responsible for her injury, but another man named Jamal Reed.
 
She told the Judge at the time that her statement had been a mistake. She said she had been afraid to mention Jamal's name, because he had threatened her and her family. She added that Jamal was off-island and claimed that he and his family could no longer be reached.
 
She denied that J.O.M. had pressured her to change her statement against him.
 
The French Quarter welder vehemently denied the charges and, despite previous convictions for arms possession, also denied he had a gun in his possession at the time of the incident.
 
S.S. was heard on Wednesday, while J.O.M. was waiting elsewhere in the Courthouse. Asked by the Prosecutor whether she maintained her statement that she was shot by Reed and not by J.O.M., she said: "It was M." She also said there was nobody else at her home at that time.
 
Asked why she had given a false statement, S.S. said:"I was under pressure. I was scared that something worse might happen."
 
The former partners both denied they had been calling each other while J.O.M. was in jail, but the Prosecutor's Office provided the Court with a recorded telephone conversation between the two, which had taken place last Friday.
 
J.O.M. said he did not have a phone at the prison, and denied that the voice, with a distinct accent and poor articulation, was his.
 
In the conversation a man and a woman could be heard arguing, with the woman stating that she was lying for him. The man threatened the women with shootings and murder, but M. denied that the voice was his and that he ever made such statements.
 
It seemed the woman was still trying to protect him. She said she could not have seen who fired the shot, because she was standing in front of the closed bedroom door when the shot was fired. She claimed the shot was fired through the closed door, but no bullet holes were found in the door, the Prosecutor said.
 
S.S. said she "thought" J.O.M. had shot her. "I assumed it was M., because he had walked out the door."
As to the firearm, S.S. admitted she had seen M. with the weapon during the day of the incident, when he came out of the shower with the gun in his hand.
 
"She's lying," M. said when confronted with this statement. "I didn't shoot. I don't have a gun," he said.
Prosecutor Van der Wulp found attempted manslaughter and mistreatment (with a weapon) proven. "M. is fond of firearms," she said, based on his previous convictions for firearms.
 
"Firearm possession leads to the use of weapons. The victim has been threatened and is afraid that M. is going to teach her a lesson after he comes out of jail. He has no conscience and is trying to conceal the truth. Society and his former girlfriend need to be protected from him for a very long time," the Prosecutor said, asking for a seven-year prison sentence.
 
Attorney-at-law Brenda Brooks said her client vehemently denied the charges and is maintaining his innocence.
"The witness is providing inconsistent statements, and her statement that he shot through the door is based on assumption. I also give credit to my client's statements," Brooks said in asking for her client's acquittal of both charges.
 
(The Daily Herald)

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