PHILIPSBURG–The Prosecutor called for a twelve-year prison sentence Wednesday for a 21-year-old suspect accused of having stabbed a man to death in Dutch Quarter on December 5, 2017. The Court will give its decision in this case September 19.
The incident allegedly had to do with a parking spot near Madrid Lane where both the accused and the victim were living. The two neighbours reportedly started arguing the day before the fatal stabbing about who should be parking in a lot close to their homes. The victim allegedly flashed a firearm and told his neighbour that he would park where he wanted.
The next day the two men had another encounter during which the victim allegedly attacked the suspect with a knife. The suspect, who remained uninjured, said he had managed to get hold of the knife by using a special self-defence technique. In pleading self-defence, he confessed to stabbing his assailant in the abdomen.
The stabbing victim passed away hours after he was admitted to St. Maarten Medical Center’s Emergency Room.
According to the Prosecutor’s Office, the victim sustained not one but 10 stab-wounds all over his body, seven of which were inflicted to his backside. Three of the wounds were fatal.
Suspect J.M.G. initially was charged with murder and manslaughter, but after the hearing the prosecutor said he only found proven the infliction of severe bodily harm which had led to the victim’s death. The prosecutor rejected claims that the defendant had acted in self-defence.
According to the prosecutor, it was the defendant who had sought a confrontation with the victim by banging at his door at 4:00am, “because he felt that his right to a parking space at a comfortable distance from his home was denied.”
Several hours later, the victim did not have any ill intentions when he walked past the suspect’s home towards his car as he wanted to charge his iPhone, the prosecutor said. He said the victim was “totally surprised” and attacked from behind.
Attorney Sjamira Roseburg disagreed with the prosecution’s qualification of the incident as a “gruesome murder.” She stated her client’s “consistent” statements and a re-enactment at the scene of the crime held late March had made it “sufficiently plausible” that her client had acted in self-defence.
According to the lawyer, murder and manslaughter could not be proven. The fact that her client had acted in self-defence should lead to her client being dismissed from all prosecution, she stated.
Roseburg said the victim, whom she described as the “neighbourhood’s terror” in a previous hearing, had threatened her client with a firearm twice during the previous day. One day later, her client had come under attack again and even after he had taken the knife from his assailant the fight continued. At that moment her client had stabbed the victim, Roseburg explained.
The suspect said he had felt threatened by his neighbour’s aggressive and violent behaviour. He told the judge he had acted on impulse as he had wanted to protect his family, consisting of his girlfriend and their daughter, who was two months old at the time of the incident.
He said he could only remember having stabbed once, after which he had “blacked out.” His lawyer told the Court her client had responded to the victim’s sudden attack from a “freeze-and-fight reflex.”
After the stabbing, a relative of the victim fired gunshots at the defendant. J.M.G. claimed he was shot at seven times before he fled the crime scene, but according to the
Prosecutor’s Office, only one gunshot was fired. The shooter, a relative of the victim, will be facing charges in a separate procedure, it was stated Wednesday.
Suspect J.M.G. was taken into custody immediately after the fatal stabbing. He was released from pre-trial detention on March 21, 2018, after the re-enactment.
The Court did not make an immediate decision on the prosecutor’s request to reinstate the defendant’s detention.
Source: The Daily Herald https://www.thedailyherald.sx/islands/80087-twelve-years-demanded-for-stabbing-in-dutch-quarter
View comments
Hide comments