Shirzaydah Raghoo yesterday said the man on trial for the murder of her husband was the rider of the bike from which the killer gunman dismounted.
She told the court she also clearly saw the man who shot and killed her husband, but agreed with the defence, that she gave the police no physical description of that person.
Raghoo was at the time testifying at the trial of Travis Mc Dougall, who is accused of murdering her husband Ashok, during a robbery on Vlissengen Road on August 18, 2014.
Mc Dougall’s story, however, has been that he had nothing to do with the commission of the offence, stating that he was elsewhere at the time of the killing. However, in his caution statement which was admitted into evidence on Tuesday, he had told the police that he had ridden the motorcycle from which the shooter, now deceased Jermaine Otto had dismounted.
Raghoo told the court yesterday that Ashok, who was a miner, travelled out from the interior some days before he was killed, and had gone to the Guyana Gold Board, where he uplifted a cheque for $4M.
Thereafter, she said that they went to Citizens Bank where he cashed the cheque.
She said that on the day in question at abut 12:45 hours, they left home together to transact business in the city with the money, which her husband usually transported in a black haversack.
As they drove along Vlissengen Road, the witness recalled her husband bringing their car to a halt at the traffic light which indicated red at the intersection with Regent Street.
Almost immediately, the woman said she saw a motorcycle ride up alongside her husband’s window which was halfway up.
She tearfully recounted that a man dismounted the cycle, demanding that the bag be handed over, but her husband refused and was shot in the chest by the robber who whipped out a gun.
She described the shooter as being thin-built and light skin, and was adamant that the rider of the motorcycle was Mc Dougall whom she said was described as being more plump.
Under cross-examination by defence attorney Nigel Hughes, Raghoo maintained that like the shooter, she had clearly seen Mc Dougall sitting on the cycle on which he sped away with the shooter, after the robbery.
The woman detailed to the court, that the shooter had several spots on his face and marks on his hands which appeared to be tattoos. She, however, agreed with Hughes, that she never provided the police with those specifics. The witness responded to Hughes, “deh nah bin question meh fine, fine.”
Hughes suggested to her, that the police must have enquired about the description of the men whom she said carried out the attack on herself and husband.
She, however, reluctantly agreed with counsel that with the exception of complexion and build, she provided to the police no race, approximate height and weight, nor the distinguishing marks she told the court she observed on the shooter or the rider.
Her response was the same, when asked if she told the police what clothing the men were wearing. Raghoo said that after her husband was shot, she failed in her attempted to grab the haversack from the back seat and exit the car, as the shooter shot her in the right foot.
After the ordeal which lasted less than a minute, she said the men escaped on the motorcycle.
When asked, the witness told Prosecutor Tuanna Hardy, that both men wore helmets, but described them to be the ones covering only the head and not face. She passionately added, “nothing aint block me from seeing them, I see them with meh own two eyes wah God give meh.”
Raghoo also testified to picking out Mc Dougall from a line-up of eight men at an identification parade which she attended two days after the attack.
She said that while still hospitalized, she was escorted in an ambulance to the Brickdam Police Station, where she made the identification. Thereafter, Raghoo said she went back to the hospital where she had been a patient. For his part, at the close of the prosecution’s case, Mc Dougall, who led his defence in unsworn testimony from the prisoner’s dock, told the court that he was innocent of the charge.
His story is that at the time of the shooting, he was at the Jialing store where he and a relative had taken a motorcycle to be repaired.
He admitted to the court that he did sign a caution statement, but said that it was prepared by the police, and he affixed his signature, only after he was beaten and shocked by the lawmen with a Taser in his genitals.
McDougall was initially charged with the capital offence alongside Otto called “Fungus,” who was among the 17 prisoners who died in the Camp Street Prison fire last year.
The case continues tomorrow morning before Justice Navindra Singh at the High Court in Georgetown where he will sum-up, and hand it over to the jury for deliberation and the likely return of a verdict.
