The Tribune

By NICO SCAVELLA

Tribune Staff Reporter

nscavella@tribunemedia.net

JAHMARO “Bingy” Edgecombe is guilty of murdering Kenyari Lightbourne in his Woods Alley neighbourhood three years ago, a Supreme Court jury unanimously found yesterday.

However, Edgecombe was unanimously acquitted of conspiring with others to commit the murder.

Sean “Fire” Brown, meanwhile, was unanimously acquitted of the role the Crown said he played in the plot, that he paid Edgecombe $6,000 for killing Lightbourne on the orders of a third person, Daran Neely.

Justice Cheryl Grant-Thompson will sentence Edgecombe on June 11.

On June 21, 2016, Lightbourne was shot multiple times while walking through his neighbourhood off Market Street. He died at the scene.

Neely and Edgecombe were arraigned within months of each other in 2016 in connection with Lightbourne’s death. Brown was charged with being an accessory after the fact.

Evidence was previously led that Edgecombe killed Lightbourne not only in furtherance of a murder plot the Crown claimed was hatched by Neely, but because he and the deceased were gang rivals.

The jury watched a video in which Edgecombe admitted to killing Lightbourne because of his affiliation with the Mad Ass gang when initially interviewed by then Detective Constable Raphael Miller just three weeks after the incident.

During that interview, Edgecombe said he was after Lightbourne and several other affiliates of the Mad Ass gang, namely “Spider”, “Eyes”, and “Kadi”, with the promise that he could be paid $8,000 for killing any of them. Lightbourne ended up being the one he shot and killed that day.

Edgecombe said on the morning of June 21, 2016, he was “looking for affiliates” of Lightbourne and the Mad Ass street gang and that he was in the area to “take out a hit”. When asked to specify what he meant by taking out a hit, Edgecombe replied: “To commit a murder that I would be paid for.”

He said on that morning, he saw both Lightbourne and “Eyes”, the latter was near an abandoned building while Lightbourne was on Market Street walking through Woods Alley. Edgecombe agreed with assertions from DC Miller that when he saw both men, he was hiding through a shortcut.

Edgecombe said when he saw Lightbourne, he did not call out his name to get his attention. Instead, Edgecombe said he simply approached Lightbourne and shot him three times with a chrome 40-caliber handgun. Afterwards, he said he ran onto Baillou Hill Road and caught a bus into the Pinewood area so he could “get paid”.

The gun he used was on his waist during his entire commute from the Woods Alley area to Pinewood, Edgecombe admitted. He said he ultimately sold it to a guy from the Chippingham area who goes by the name of “Mob”.

Edgecombe also told the officer that Neely was the one who authorised the hit on Lightbourne’s life some days before the actual murder, and that it was Neely who sent Brown to pay him the $6,000 for successfully executing the crime.

And after killing Lightbourne and cashing in on his reward, Edgecombe told police he “paid off some bills” with the blood money and distributed the rest to family members.

However, Justice Grant-Thompson instructed the jury to acquit Neely following submissions by his attorneys that he had no case to answer.

Subsequent to that, Edgecombe, taking the witness stand in his own defence, said officers squeezed his testicles and suffocated him with a plastic bag to get him to confess to killing Lightbourne.

However, Edgecombe said the officers who threatened and manhandled him told him they didn’t really want him; they were more interested in him implicating the “big fish”, namely Brown and Neely.

And for that reason, he said, officers forcibly instructed him on what to say during his record of interview, and also instructed him on what to do and say when they would ultimately record a video of him showing them exactly where and how he allegedly committed the crime.

Edgecombe also said officers tried to use allegations that he shot at the police prior to Lightbourne’s death as leverage in the situation by saying they would drop those charges against him if he cooperated with their scheme.

During his closing submissions, Edgecombe’s attorney David Cash told jurors that accepting the Crown’s claims that his client admitted to killing Lightbourne would be like putting a “stamp of approval” on police savagery.

And without Edgecombe’s confession to police, which he asserted is “tainted with brutality and torture”, Mr Cash said the Crown’s evidence against his client consequently amounted to “nothing”.

However, lead Crown prosecutor Racquel Whymms encouraged jurors not to “buy into” Edgecombe’s “performance”, suggesting that it was likely a by-product of his experience in prison, which she asserted is an institution of higher learning for criminality in which accused persons discuss ways and tactics to get off criminal charges.

Al-Leecia Delancy was the next Crown attorney on record. Nathan Smith represented Brown. Wayne Munroe, QC and Jomo Campbell represented Neely.