EMOTIONS ran high in courtroom number one of the Home Circuit Court in downtown Kingston on Thursday when a relative of George Richards — a man allegedly murdered at the hands of two defendants in the ongoing trial of 25 suspected members of the alleged Tesha Miller faction of the Klansman Gang — testified that the next time she saw him was over a month later when she “closed his eyes” while he lay on an autopsy table. Richards was killed while in the process of making a soup delivery.

The sombre relative, who was the one to identify his body ahead of the autopsy on October 11, 2017, covered her face briefly before bravely continuing.

“They showed me him, I went and looked and it is him, I closed his eyes because his eyes did open,” she testified.

She said on the night of September 16, 2017, Richards, a tiler by profession, had been busy making soup and was “there selling his soup” until he got a call to make a delivery. She told the court that it was not long after that she got wind of his demise.

The distraught relative, who fought to compose herself, dabbing at her eyes with a rag in order to finish her testimony, described how she sometime later went to “his crime scene” where she saw the pair of brown slippers he was wearing that night discarded on the ground. Softly, she told the prosecutor leading the evidence that this was all she could remember of the scene that greeted her that night.

Defendants Dwayne Frater and Lamar Rowe, according to the indictment unsealed by the Crown on February 4 when the trial began, are to answer for Richards’ murder.

Frater and Lamar, under count seven of the indictment, are charged with “facilitating the commission of a serious offence by a criminal organisation”, contrary to Section 6 of the Criminal Justice (Suppression of Criminal Organisations) Act, commonly called the anti-gang legislation.

On Thursday, a witness, the first “eyewitness” to the incident, described the pandemonium that unfolded during the incident which claimed the life of the 28-year-old, whom he said he had known from childhood.

According to the witness, he was some yards away from the fated spot when he heard explosions. The witness, who described seeing a “lot of men” running in “different directions”, said “some slide and drop… and get up back and run” — a description which some of the accused appeared to find amusing, smiles tugging at their lips. He said he saw Richards bringing up the rear and making a desperate run for his life.

“He was running behind the crowd but he was running and limping… explosions were going off randomly… I suddenly saw [Richards] fall face down… the guy who was chasing him came over him and shoot him multiple times in the upper body and ran off,” the eyewitness told the court.

He said before the melee, the individuals, including Richards, had just been “hanging out, having good times and holding a vibe as usual”.

Under questioning from the prosecutor leading the evidence as to how he was able to determine that Richards was the one being shot from the distance where he stood, the witness said, “I know him from him small, just like having a kid, you know him from a distance… I am familiar with his limping movement.”

He said after Richards fell, one of the attackers stood over him and “just kept firing away”. He said by this time the other man who had chased another segment of the crowd in the opposite direction showed up, after which the two turned tail and ran, disappearing from his sight.

The witness, who ruefully told the court that he was unable to see the faces of the two assailants clearly, said he nonetheless went into his house and dialled 911. He further described for the court how residents who had scampered for their lives returned shortly after the attackers ran off and attempted to save Richards’ life by trying to resuscitate him.

“But it never worked out, he was on the ground and they tried to put him in a car, a lot of blood was running out of him, they eventually got him in after a hard struggle,” he said, recalling that Richards was then rushed to hospital.

The witness, who said he remained at the scene until cops arrived to process it, under cross-examination by defence attorney Kemar Richards, who represents Frater, insisted that he “would not know [them] if he saw them again” stating that he would “walk right past them and don’t know them” since he didn’t see their facial features that night and nine years have since passed.

The defence will resume its cross-examination this morning when the trial resumes at 10:00.