SAVANNA-LA-MAR, Westmoreland — Internet connectivity issues on Tuesday foiled prosecutors’ plans to wrap up the case against a teenage boy accused of raping, buggering, and strangling to death a nine-year-old girl.

The case, which began last week, resumed with in-person testimony from one expert witness followed by another testifying virtually. Efforts to connect virtually with a third witness, a biology expert who is head of the DNA department, were unsuccessful.

A 15-minute break granted by Justice Courtney Daye was not enough to resolve the issue and it stretched into a 45-minute pause in the proceedings. The issue was still unresolved at 4:00 pm.

“We thought that we could have solved it, but we are not able to solve it for this evening. So, in order to make up for lost time, we start at 9:30 in the morning in order to give evidence with the last witness from the DNA department,” Justice Daye said.

On Tuesday the prosecution’s first witness was a detective constable who had also testified on Monday. He was called to the stand, over the defence team’s objections, to give evidence about photographs he took at the crime scene. “I hear your objection,” Justice Day told the defence. “My ruling, in terms of your objection, is that if the objection is of such that would cause injustice or prejudice to your client, the accused, then this is something that we would really have to look into. However, I do not find that calling the officer to represent those photographs — which were already agreed upon [between the defence and the prosecution] — amounts to an injustice or prejudice to the defence.”

During the detective’s testimony, Denley Saddoo, one of the lawyers representing the accused, tried to prevent the court being shown CDs with images from the crime scene without the victim’s body present. The scene was already processed and the body removed when the detective returned, the court was told.

“The ruling of this court is that the CD processed by the witness and that the absence of the body when the officer revisited the scene is not a factor to exclude the admissibility of the CD,” stated Justice Daye. “Accordingly, I rule that the CDs identified by the officer be admitted in evidence…”

The accused allegedly sexually assaulted and killed the young girl, whom he knew, after she accepted his invitation to pick apples as they walked home from school on June 5, 2018. Her body was found near a guava tree which is about 15 to 20 feet from the apple tree, the detective said. The boy was 13 at the time of the alleged incident.

A post-mortem report presented in court last week showed that the child died of asphyxia caused by manual strangulation. She also had lacerations of the vagina and anus.

In her testimony on Tuesday, the day’s second witness, head of the forensic lab in Kingston, told the court that semen was found on the inner section of the accused’s underpants. That section of the garment was sent for analysis. She also testified about the results of vaginal and anal swabs taken from the victim and received from the police for processing. The anal swabs, the court was told, contained traces of semen and blood.