After facing his second trial, Neville Forde was on Tuesday freed of the 2017 murder of Sophia bread vendor Andre Melroy Alexander, after his unanimous acquittal by a 12-member jury.
Following hours of deliberations, the panel returned with its verdict, finding Forde not guilty of the capital charge, which had stated that he murdered Alexander on May 5th, 2017, during a robbery.
The trial was conducted by Justice Jo-Ann Barlow at the High Court in Demerara.
The former accused was represented by a battery of attorneys led by Ronald Daniels while the State’s case was led by Prosecutor Lisa Cave.
Forde was one of two men charged with Alexander’s murder, but after his first trial back in 2019, a jury was hung in its verdict, and he had to be retried.
His former co-accused Shaquille Grant was, however freed after a Judge upheld a no-case submission made by his attorney Nigel Hughes.
Alexander, known as ‘Alex’ and ‘Bread Man,’ 42, a father of two, formerly of Lot 394 Section C, Sophia, succumbed at the Georgetown Public Hospital hours after being shot by a bandit who police said posed as a customer and held him at gunpoint.
