Shineka Gray murder trial to resume Jan 3
Published:Saturday | December 30, 2023 | 12:10 AMChristopher Thomas/Gleaner Writer
WESTERN BUREAU:
Gregory Roberts, the man currently on trial for the 2017 murder of St James schoolgirl Shineka Gray, will spend the first week of 2024 listening to evidence from a police forensic specialist when his trial resumes in the St James Circuit Court on Wednesday, January 3.
The police witness, who briefly took the stand when the case was last heard before presiding High Court Justice Bertram Morrison on December 14, is expected to be the 16th out of a projected total of 18 prosecution witnesses to give testimony against Roberts, who has been in custody for just under six years since his arrest and charge in relation to the 15-year-old student’s gruesome stabbing death.
Since the start of Roberts’ trial on November 23, there has been riveting, emotional, and at times grisly and ominous testimony against the defendant. The court has so far heard testimony indicating that Roberts took Gray to a location in Irwin, St James, where he brutally stabbed her to death on January 29, 2017, and where her body was found three days later.
Gray was a grade 10 student of the Green Pond High School in St James, at the time of her death. In a tragic case of irony, she was last seen alive on her way home from the funeral of a schoolmate on January 29, 2017.
Roberts and another man, Mario Morrison, were arrested and charged with Gray’s murder after the schoolgirl’s body was found with stab wounds in bushes in Irwin on February 1, 2017.
Morrison pleaded guilty in September 2022 and was sentenced one month later to life imprisonment, leaving Roberts as the sole remaining defendant.
Morrison would later become a key witness in the prosecution’s evidence against Roberts, testifying on November 30 that he and Roberts had sex with Gray after the men picked up the teenager in Montego Bay.
According to Morrison’s evidence-in-chief, the men then took Gray to Irwin where Morrison used Roberts’ phone to video-record Roberts killing the young girl.
The trial has so far had a chilling repetition of the word ‘sacrifice’ in various witnesses’ testimonies, including Morrison’s evidence where he stated that Roberts used the word while asking him to video the stabbing.
The trial has also included witness testimony from a digital forensic expert who testified to extracting text messages from Roberts that were on a cellphone belonging to Roberts’ ex-girlfriend. According to that witness, at least one of those messages from Roberts indicated that he was making a ‘sacrifice’ while allegedly warning the ex-girlfriend to repay money to him.
The ex-girlfriend, who was among the civilian witnesses for the prosecution, likewise testified to receiving a text message from Roberts which included the same word, ‘sacrifice’, and that he had also asked if she had received a video from another associate.
That associate, another civilian witness, had previously testified that Roberts came to him on January 29, 2017 wearing bloodstained clothes and then showed him a video of himself, Roberts, stabbing a young girl.
Roberts is being represented in the trial by attorneys Chumu Parris and Leroy Equiano.