THE freedom of Manchester higgler Shevano Richards has been suspended as he was convicted for murder last Friday.

Richards, who while being investigated for a 2015 double murder, was found to be the man responsible for the 2013 contract killing of Artwell Alphonso Joseph, and was found guilty of that slaying in the Manchester Parish Court.

Joseph, a 48-year-old Guyanese businessman who had retired to Jamaica from Britain and was the operator of a loan company in Manchester, was shot during a home invasion at his McKinley Drive address during a robbery.

According to Joseph’s wife, who was a witness at the trial, she was in her room when she heard a voice say, “Weh di money deh?”

She then said she heard her husband, who was in the living room, say “Honey, call the police.” She said she then heard two explosions and, upon investigating, saw two masked men in the living room and her husband lying on the ground, unresponsive. She said she then headed towards the outside, determined to get help for her husband, only to have one of the robbers ask, “Lady, weh u a go?” while following her.

She said in turning around to answer she saw Richards, who had by then taken his mask off. She said she told him, “I don’t care if you kill me, I am going to get help for my husband.” She raised an alarm while continuing on her way outside.

Her screams alerted neighbours, who determined that something was amiss, and the men fled.

According to the prosecution, Richards later bragged to an acquaintance that he “got money to kill a man in Manchester”, and even took the individual to show him the house where Joseph and his wife had lived.

The Crown said, fortuitously, during the investigations into the shooting deaths of two brothers — Oshane Levy, 21 and 27-year-old Anthony Bailey — off Highway Drive, Greenvale, in May of 2015, the acquaintance, upon learning that Richards had been taken into custody for those murders told the police about his boast that he had been the one to kill Joseph. He was subsequently charged with that murder and tried. He is to be sentenced on June 26.

In the meantime Richards is scheduled to also stand trial for the killing of the two brothers at a later date, the Jamaica Observer understands.