(Trinidad Express) Hours after police officer Eric Mark filed a habeas corpus, a judicial mandate requiring that a prisoner be brought before the courts, he appeared in the Port of Spain Magistrates’ Court charged with murdering his ex-girlfriend yesterday.
Mark, 39, of Allen Street, Sangre Grande, is charged with hacking to death Giselle Maloney on August 16 at her Manrick Street, Guaico apartment.
Police reports stated that Maloney’s landlord heard screams coming from her apartment around 10.30 p.m. on the night she was killed.
Mark was arrested a short while later in a vehicle intercepted by officers of the Eastern Division Task Force. He has been in custody ever since.
Maloney, 24, was a clerk at the Ministry of Social Development in Sangre Grande and the mother of a five-year-old son.
An autopsy report showed she died as a result of multiple chop wounds to the head, face and neck.
Through his attorneys Israel Khan SC and Ulric Skerritt, Mark sought to force the State’s hand as he had been in custody for 13 days without charge.
Following the first appearance of the habeas corpus, before Justice Joan Charles, Mark was charged, resulting in Khan and Skerritt withdrawing their application.
Mark was not treated like other prisoners when he made his way to court, entering through the public entrance and allowed to walk through the corridors.
Mark, who was charged by Insp Lynford Coggins, has been on injury leave for the past year, following an accident, appeared before Senior Magistrate Annette McKenzie who adjourned the matter to September 26 and transferred it to the Sangre Grande Magistrates’ Court.
No request for special treatment was made by court prosecutor Sgt Rawle Ramharrack, who told the court that a file will be submitted to the Director of Public Prosecutions within the next two weeks for a State attorney to be appointed.
