The Tribune

By LAMECH JOHNSON

Tribune Staff Reporter

ljohnson@tribunemedia.net

TWO men must wait an additional week before the start of the penalty phase of their trial begins in Supreme Court concerning a fatal shooting that claimed three lives, including a woman due to give birth to a baby boy.

Shawn Knowles, 43, and Timothy Saunders, 36, reappeared in the Supreme Court yesterday before Senior Justice Stephen Isaacs nearly five months after a jury convicted the pair of three manslaughter charges related to the July 30, 2011, deaths of Edward Braynen, Chackara Rahming and Erica Ward.

However, Knowles lawyer Romona Farquharson-Seymour requested an adjournment of the proceedings to July 22 due to an ongoing trial before the Supreme Court. The request was granted.

Knowles and Saunders, in the interim, asked the judge for their own personal copies of transcripts from the trial for use of their likely appeals that will follow sentencing.

The pair stood trial on charges of murder.

The Crown alleged that the killings were in retaliation for the July 12, 2011 murders of Kevin Forbes and Alwayne Leslie at a Haitian village off Montgomery Avenue.

Ward was pregnant with the child of Serrano Adderley, the 30-year-old man charged with the deaths of Forbes and Leslie. Knowles is the nephew of Forbes.

The victims were asleep in a one-bedroom apartment when intruders, who the prosecution alleged to be Knowles and Saunders, forced their way inside by blasting the locks with a shotgun. Once inside, they shot the women in the head and Braynen in the back using a shotgun.

Four young children inside the apartment were found unharmed by police when they came to the scene.

Saunders’ lawyer, Lennox Coleby, suggested that associates of Leslie committed the murders.

Farquharson-Seymour said there was no evidence - fingerprint, footprint impression or DNA - linking Knowles to the scene of the killings.

Though the jury’s 8-4 guilty verdict for three counts of murder were not acceptable in law, they found Knowles and Saunders guilty of manslaughter by provocation on the same count.

The jury also returned a guilty verdict of 8-4 on the remaining charges of possession of ammunition and two counts of possession of unlicensed firearm with which Knowles was separately charged.

Cordell Frazier prosecuted the case.