FORMER People’s National Party (PNP) activist Milton ‘Tony’ Welsh will know on December 8 if the prosecution will try him a third time for the killing of a man in 2006.

Welsh was set for trial in the Home Circuit Court yesterday but the prosecution told the court that it has issues securing the attendance of the main witness, who was said to be overseas.

Welsh, the reputed Brandon Hill, St Andrew area leader, first went on trial in October 2006 for the murder of 21-year-old Damion Hussey of Golden Spring, St Andrew on January 15, 2006.

That trial ended with a hung jury, setting up a second trial in 2007, which also ended with a hung jury after the 12 people failed to reach a verdict.

Hussey, who was in his yard, was accused of stoning a bus with supporters of Dr Peter Phillips while it was travelling through Golden Spring, following the launch of Phillips’ presidential campaign for leadership of the ruling PNP. Hussey was set upon by a group of men and stabbed several times.

Welsh turned himself in to the police 15 days after the incident and was pointed out as the man who allegedly stabbed Hussey in the chest several times.

During the trial in 2006, Hussey’s aunt, Elaine Gooden, tearfully testified how Welsh stabbed her nephew, while other men pummelled him as he begged for his life.

Welsh, in an unsworn statement from the prisoner’s dock, said that he was not at the murder scene as he went to Bull Bay with his daughter after leaving Phillips’ campaign launch at the National Arena.