Man whose ‘anger’ baffled magistrate charged with murder

A man whose “anger” baffled a magistrate six years ago when he was a teenager has been charged with murder in connection with the first homicide in St. Vincent and the Grenadines this year.

Raheem Da Silva, of Redemption Sharpes, appeared before the Kingstown Magistrate’s Court today (Wednesday) charged with the Jan. 21 murder of fellow villager, Rudolph Pollard, 61.

DaSilva, 24, who was unrepresented, was not required to plead to the indictable charge.

Senior Magistrate Colin John informed him that bail was not opened to him.

John adjourned and transferred the matter to the Serious Offences Court on May 6.

Detective Corporal Alex Primus of the Major Crime Unit is leading the investigation.

Polar died on a sidewalk about 200 yards from the Milton Cato Memorial Hospital  in Kingstown on Jan. 21, two days after discharging himself from the health care facility, to which he was admitted two days earlier on Jan. 17.

In a statement immediately after the death, police said officers who responded to a report about an unresponsive man, met Pollard’s body sitting against the Central Medical Stores Building, across from OT Car Park on Tyrell Street, Kingstown, sometime after 8 a.m.

Sources told iWitness News that Pollard was stabbed in the abdomen about two weeks earlier but the wounding was never reported to police.

Sources said that one of Pollard’s relatives took him to the hospital on Jan. 17 but Pollard discharged himself from the healthcare facility on Jan. 19, leaving his IV lines behind.

Police were searching for the injured man but did not locate him until they responded to the report on Jan. 21, sources said.

People who saw Pollard’s body said that it still had the connections for IV lines protruding from it.

In November 2018, then Senior Magistrate (now High Court judge) Rickie Burnett questioned DaSilva about the reason for his anger after the then 19-year-old damaged some of the contents of the holding cell at the Serious Offences Court.

DaSilva was at the time being sentenced in relation to a charge that on Oct. 5, 2018, at Pauls Avenue, without lawful excuse, he damaged one concrete block bench, value EC$350 and one piece of corrugated steel, value EC$250, by smashing them with an unknown object.

The items, the property of the Government of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, were in the holding cell at the Serious Offences Court.

In response to the magistrate’s question about his anger, DaSilva told the court that the police had arrested him and confiscated his EC$350.

The defendant said that his behaviour in the holding cell was because he wanted his money back from the police.

The magistrate, however, observed that the money is the subject of court proceedings and that the police cannot just return it.

He told the youth that he must allow the court to determine the outcome of those proceedings, adding that the defendant cannot just go and mash up the chair and cause what the prosecution said was EC$600 in damage.

“All I see in front me is an angry 19-year-old,” the magistrate said, adding, “I don’t know. I live in St. Vincent and the Grenadines and I read the papers as well.”

Burnett said he was not going to order compensation in the stated sum of EC$600, adding that he thinks that the value determined is sometimes on the high side.

He ordered the youth to pay EC$350 in compensation by Dec. 31 or spend one month in jail.

In December 2019, the High Court sentenced DaSilva to six years in prison for a robbery he committed in April 2018.