Romando Romano Andrews, St. Vincent and the Grenadines’ latest murder accused, protests his innocence after his arraignment last Thursday.
Andrews appeared before Senior magistrate Colin John at the Kingstown Magistrate’s Court, charged with murder in connection with the Sept. 7, 2023 killing in Buccament Bay.
Andrews, who is also known as “Russian”, is alleged to have murdered Jovanne Baptiste, a 29-year-old construction worker, of Rose Place.
Baptiste was gunned down around 7:55 a.m. while on his way to work at the construction site of Sandals Beaches Resort.
Andrews was remanded in custody to appear before the Serious Offences Court Monday Jan. 8, for the setting of a date for a preliminary inquiry.
His arraignment came two days after Paul Avenue resident, Rion Cole, 24, appeared in court in connection with the August 2022 murder of Zarell Small, of Arnos Vale.
Small aka Keisha, a 43-year-old resident of Pole Yard, died of manual strangulation sometime between August 24 and 25, 2022, a post mortem concluded.
Her body was found on the tarmac of the decommissioned ET Joshua airport around 6 a.m. on Aug. 25, 2022, with a piece of PVC conduit protruding from her vagina.
Small’s murder was one of two that the nation’s chief crime fighter, acting Assistant Commissioner of Police Trevor “Buju” Bailey ordered detectives to revisit last November.
The other was the murder of Previous Williams, 17, of Sion Hill, whose body was found in a bag in Richmond Hill on May 12, 2022.
At a press conference in Kingstown on Tuesday, Bailey said that solving Williams’ murder is still a priority for the police.
SVG recorded a record-setting 42 homicides in 2022. This was superseded in 2023 by 55 homicides, 52 of which were classified as murder.
Bailey said that emphasising the murder cases he did last November did not mean that police had placed the other investigations in the cold cases cabinets.
Speaking at the same press conference, Acting Commissioner of police Enville Williams said the police take every murder seriously.
Bailey urged the public to be patient and have confidence in the nation’s homicide investigators.
Most of the murders committed in SVG over the last decade or so remain unsolved.
The criminal justice sytems in St Vincent is not without its criticisms. As an avid scrutinizer of the system, I concluded that too offen citizens are accused of having committed criminal offences without acceptable evidences. Quite often the so evidences are flimsy at best. Too often, poor police work are to be blamed. Lack of DNA evidences, Balistic test not done and CTV recordings are unavailable.
Police guru Trevor Buju Bailey has a tendency to convene press conferences when an arrest is arrest of Romano ” Russian ” Andrews. If one were to analyze history of persons who are arrested and later convicted, the record is dismal one. I concluded that arrest sometimes are made to give the appearance that the police have a hand on crime. Bailey watch words are that he is asking the public to be patient and trust the police.
Elevating Colin John, the childhood and bosom boyhood friend and neighbor of Bunju Bailey and senior magistrate ,is a hindrance and a betrayal to the proper administration of justice in St Vincent. The St Vincent bar Association has questioned the appointment of Magistrate John. It is akin to appointing the mongoose to guard the hen house.
Kenton my friend laying murder charges are not equivalent to a conviction or a likelihood of a conviction. Other elements have to happen to secure such. Remember the hurdle to overcome as in the case of a criminal act is ” beyond a reasonable doubt”. Quite often these arrest fall flat on their faces for a lack of acceptable evidence to secure a conviction. Not even the recycling of jurys as often be the case in St Vincent is a panacea to solve the gaping hole that exist in the criminal justice system in St Vincent.
The arrest of certain individuals and laying of murder charges will not necessarily result in a conviction. The word indicted is not equivalent to a conviction. There is a certain crime fighting “Guru” in St Vincent has a habit of “jumping the gun”, by laying charges without the iota of evidences to tie the person charged with the crime.
Quite often there are no “smoking gun” such as ballistic test, DNA evidence or camera evidences and witness statements to tie the person charged with a crime. The end result of all these are the high rate in which cases are thrown out by the highest court for lack of acceptable evidence. Statistics have shown that the crime solving ratio in St Vincent although considered to be among the world murder capital is on the wrong trajectory.