ONE of Noel Maitland’s neighbours at the Chelsea Manor apartment complex in St Andrew on Thursday testified that he felt he was being pressured by the police constable to delete closed-circuit television (CCTV) footage captured by cameras around his house.

“He said that he didn’t want me to feel like he was pressuring me to delete the footage, but I felt pressured,” the neighbour told the court.

The testimony prompted Maitland to use a pen to make frequent jottings on pieces of paper as he sat in the prisoner’s dock, crossing his legs occasionally.

Maitland’s 24-year-old social media influencer girlfriend, Donna-Lee Donaldson, was reported missing on July 13, 2022, two days after he picked her up from her house in St Andrew.

Closed-circuit television footage at Chelsea Manor, where Maitland lived, showed Donaldson arriving there but none showed when she left. Her body has not been found. Based on circumstantial evidence, prosecutors believe she was murdered inside Maitland’s apartment between July 12 and 13 and her body disposed of.

Maitland is currently on trial in the Home Circuit Court in downtown Kingston, charged with murder and unlawful burial of a corpse.

On Thursday the neighbour, who is overseas, gave testimony remotely via a secured video link.

He told the seven-member jury that Maitland first spoke to him regarding the footage via a phone call on July 13, 2022. He said Maitland called him about 5:00 pm. The witness said he told Maitland that he was unavailable and that he should call him back around 7:00 pm.

The witness said that when Maitland called back he was still not at home as he was at a friend’s house.

He said Maitland told him that he was up for promotion at work and wanted to know if the footage from the cameras around the neighbour’s house was stored. The neighbour said Maitland expressed concern, claiming that because of the upcoming promotion, his superiors would be conducting background checks on him and that anything problematic that was recorded on the camera could jeopardise his promotion.

Trying to explain what he meant by problematic, the witness said Maitland had mentioned that the camera might have picked him up walking by with a marijuana joint in his hand. He said Maitland wanted him to give him his word that nothing was being saved from the camera. The neighbour said he told him that he would check when he got home.

He didn’t speak to Maitland again that day.

He said that on July 14 he was working from home and about 11:00 am, Maitland knocked on his door. He told the court that Maitland also called him on the phone. However he told the cop, via text message, that he was in a meeting. However, Maitland remained at the door for about 15 minutes afterwards, according to the witness.

The neighbour, who said he is an economist, told the court that when he opened the door, Maitland told him that a girl who was by his place had gone missing and wanted to know if he could come in to see the footage from the camera. The witness said he let the policeman in and started to navigate the equipment so they could watch the footage of a particular time period given by Maitland, which was Tuesday, July 12, 2022.

The neighbour said it was at that time he realised that footage was saved from only two of the five cameras around his apartment. One of them was trained on the parking lot and could capture Maitland’s parking spot, among other things. The other pointed to a passageway and worked when triggered by motion sensors.

The camera that pointed to the parking lot picked up Maitland’s vehicle coming onto the complex and driving into his parking spot. The neighbour said that based on what he could see, no one else exited the car.

“At that time he said he would feel more comfortable if I deleted the footage. He asked me more than once. I told him that I would not delete the footage. I did not feel it was appropriate to delete footage from video recording,” the witness said.

“I told him that I could call the technician and have the technician come and go over the footage. Mr Maitland affirmed that he would come back when the technician gets to come. At this time he seemed worried and it just seemed that there was great consternation in his appearance. He seemed worried. When the technician was there I allowed him inside the apartment again. The technician began to navigate the footage from the camera after Noel Maitland told us what period to look for,” the neighbour said.

“Upon instructions from him, we looked at Monday night into early Tuesday morning. At that period I also saw the same vehicle drive into Mr Maitland’s parking spot. I saw a woman come out of the vehicle from the passenger side. She was of light complexion, slim build, with long hair appearing to be a weave,” the neighbour told the court, explaining that he had seen, on previous occasions, a female who resembled the woman in the video but could not validate if it was the same person in the footage.

The neighbour told the court that the date on the recording was correct, but indicated that the time on the recording was out of sync with the date.

The trial continues next week.