It was an incensed gun owner David Benn who told the court he retorted sharply after murder accused Kason Kemar Edwards confessed to breaking into his house and stealing his shotgun.
“He said he broke into my house, took the shotgun, sawed off the barrel and commit a crime and I said ‘you mek the officers come and terrorise me and say I sell the gun and now you admit to committing a crime’?” he told the No 2 Supreme Court yesterday.
Benn, of Welch Town, St Peter, explained he was a licensed firearm owner, with permission from the Ministry of Health to hunt monkeys, and he owned the shotgun which he bought from, and stored at Eversley Wharton.
On March 24, 2012, Benn said he locked the shotgun in a private compartment under the kitchen sink and attended a funeral.
He went to Limegrove, then to Holder’s Season and when he returned home, he said he realised something was not right. He saw his back door open and when he entered he found the kitchen cupboard door had been dismantled. The shotgun was gone.
“Police come and speak to me, suspecting me because the gun was gone,” he told the court.
When next he saw the gun in 2014, it was in “very bad condition”; its stock was sawed off, as was the barrel, which now taped and had polyfiller.
The witness said he later went to the police station where he saw accused Edwards. He told police he did not know the accused, but he said Edwards replied he (Edwards) knew him (Benn).
In answer to attorney Arthur Holder, the witness said the sale of the gun was done through the right channels in front of lawmen at District “A” Police Station.
He added he did not write the two statements given to police – one taken on March 24, 2012, (“that was when the gun get carry way,” he said), the second one on October 20, 2012, which was taken while he was “under real stress”.
“After the police come and terrorise me and tell me I sell the gun, this had me little disturbed ‘cause the body ain’t had no right breking in my house,” he said, maintaining the accused did confess to breaking into his house and stealing his shotgun.
