MONTEGO BAY, St James — A witness on Monday told the court that the man accused of murdering young Shineka Gray showed him a video of him committing the act.

“I saw a man stabbing a little girl with a big kitchen knife and blood splashing everywhere… The little girl was groaning and begging for help with her hands in the air… I asked him who was in the video, and he said, ‘It’s me, you don’t see that it’s me’ and then pulled away the phone from my face,” the witness said from the dock in the St James Circuit Court.

He was referencing a conversation that he allegedly had on January 29, 2017 with Gregory Roberts, who is charged with the murder of the 15-year-old girl.

The witness said that before Roberts left, he (Roberts) asked him for water to wash his hands which had blood on them.

He further testified that while he was on his way to work the following day, he saw a missing girl photo and recognised it to be the same girl that was in the video.

The man said the conversation with Roberts took place at the house of a female friend. He was at her house, he said, when a car drove into the yard and someone called the female. He recognised the voice as that of Roberts, whom he had met about two months before.

He told the court that the female said she wasn’t going outside because she didn’t want him (Roberts), to kill her. He stated that Roberts then called him and informed him that he wanted to show him something, and he went outside to meet him. He claimed that Roberts, who was dressed in a blood-spattered merino, then showed him the video on his phone.

Roberts is being tried for the 2017 murder of the Green Pond High School student whose body was discovered with stab wounds in bushes in Irwin, St James, on February 1 that year.

On Monday, the second day of the trial, the teenager’s mother re-lived the trauma of her child’s disappearance and the horror of being told she was dead.

Speaking via the Zoom platform she said she last saw her daughter on January 29, 2017. She had left her at home as she went to work in the morning but saw her later that day.

“I was at the KFC on Howard Cooke Boulevard in St James, and I saw Shineka and her friends at the KFC. I spoke to Shineka and I left and went home because she was eating and it was 6:30,” the mother explained in her evidence-in-chief.

She also told the court that when her daughter did not get home at 7:00 pm as expected, she tried several times, without success, to contact her by phone and then spent several hours looking for her in Montego Bay. Her search was futile.

As a result, she said, she called Shineka’s aunt and had a conversation with her, after which she went home.

The mother testified that she reported her daughter’s disappearance at the Freeport Police Station on January 30, but did not learn of her whereabouts until two days later.

“On February 1, 2017, I got a call and I went to Irwin in St James, and I spoke to a police officer and the officer showed me a picture of Shineka in a tiger-print dress, the same picture in the missing person’s report. I don’t know anything after that. I woke up in the hospital,” the mother said, wiping her eyes.

Roberts, who was dressed in a red shirt and black pants and sported plaited hair, occasionally smiled during the testimonies.

The trial continues on Tuesday.