Latest update March 29th, 2024 12:59 AM
Nov 11, 2019 News
Attorneys for Brian Leitch are seeking to have the Appeal Court overturn his conviction for the murder of South Central hotel owner Joseph Jagdeo, who was tied up and slain in his bedroom in 2013.
This was confirmed by attorney-at-law Hewley Griffith, one of the two attorneys that represented Leith.
On the morning of Wednesday, November 13, 2013, hotel handyman Wendell Eastman went to see his boss. That was Joseph Jagdeo, the proprietor of the South Central Hotel, located at Lot 208 South Road. Eastman’s story is that he approached Jagdeo’s room, and noticed that the door was slightly open. By nightfall, Jagdeo still had not appeared.
Eastman says that at around 6:00 a.m. the following morning, he was filling water near to Room Nine, which Jagdeo occupied, when he observed his boss’s pet cat by Jagdeo’s office door. He said that after a while, the cat began scratching on the wall of Room 10 and started purring.
He says he found the cat’s behaviour to be unusual and this prompted him to call Patrick Wilson, another hotel employee. He said that he told his colleague about the cat’s strange behaviour. He then peered through a louvre window in the room and saw the door keys to Room 10 on the bed.
He said he pushed a pipe through the window and snagged the keys. He handed the keys over to Wilson, who opened the room door.
According to Eastman, the cat made a sudden dash into the room and ran back out, purring. Eastman says he warned Wilson not to go into the room. Kneeling in a passageway next to the room, Eastman peered inside and said he saw exactly what had alarmed the cat.
Beneath the bed was the bound body of 62-year-old Joseph Jagdeo..
A post mortem would reveal the cause of death as haemorrhage due to blunt trauma to the head, compounded by suffocation and compression to the neck. His neck and spine were also broken.
Detectives detained the barmaid and about four others, including a sex worker.
On Tuesday, November 12, she had reportedly met up with a young man known as ‘Big Foot’ in Pike Street, Kitty. She had known ‘Big Foot’ when the two were serving time at the New Opportunity Corps (NOC). The woman and ‘Big Foot’ later occupied a room at the South Central ‘hotel.’
Further, it is alleged that later on the same day, November 12, one of Jagdeo’s cell phones disappeared. The girlfriend said she subsequently gave the hotel owner the phone and claimed that her boyfriend, ‘Big Foot,’ had stolen it.
It is alleged that Jagdeo bought another cell phone and also told ‘Big Foot’ that he would have to vacate the premises by Wednesday, November 13, 2013.
The girlfriend alleged that she had put ‘Big Foot’ out of her room after finding him with the stolen phone.
In a statement to police, she allegedly said that the maintenance man at the ‘hotel’ felt sorry for ‘Big Foot’ and permitted him to stay in Room 10.
Police arrested a woman, Shauntel De Younge, with the slain man’s phone.
Kiana Garnett, a friend of De Younge’s, alleged that on November 13, 2013, they were going to purchase a ‘Chinese food’ when they saw ‘Big Foot.’
‘Big Foot’ allegedly asked them if they wanted a phone and “Shauntel replied yes.”
‘Big Foot’ allegedly sold a small silver Nokia cell phone to De Younge for $4,000 and told her “not to answer it when anyone calls.”
That phone allegedly belonged to Joseph Jagdeo.
On November 30, 2013, police issued a wanted bulletin for 19-year-old Brian Leitch, called “Big Foot,” in connection with the murder of South Central proprietor Joseph Jagdeo.
The bulletin gave the suspect’s last known address as Lot 2118 Diamond Housing Scheme, East Bank Demerara.
On November 30, Leitch’s mother took him to Kaieteur News,
She said that she wanted her son to turn himself in.
Leitch accompanied a Kaieteur News journalist to CID Headquarters, Eve Leary. He was subsequently handed over to detectives at the Brickdam Police Station.
There, he allegedly gave police an unsworn statement in which he confessed to attacking and binding Jagdeo.
According to a detective, he put the accusation of murder to Leitch after cautioning him.
Leitch, police allege, first said, “I don’t know anything about any murder.”
In the caution statement, Leitch allegedly recounted that Joseph Jagdeo had come to his room at the hotel and asked him to leave.
Leitch, the statement alleged, related that he was “very angry” at what Jagdeo told him and tied the hotel owner’s hands, while also tying another piece of cloth around Jagdeo’s mouth.
In the statement attributed to the suspect, Leitch allegedly confessed that he pushed Jagdeo under the bed in the room before throwing the door keys on the bed.
“I then guh in he (Jagdeo) office and tek he cell phone. I sorry for what I made happen. I didn’t mean to kill he,” Leitch allegedly stated.
On December 2, 2013, Brian Leitch was charged and remanded for murder. A photograph showed Leitch with that same ‘spaced out’ smile as he entered the docks.
His trial began early last year, in April. He was unable to hire an attorney, and two attorneys for the state (Hewley Griffith and Lawrence Harris) represented him.
Giving unsworn testimony from the docks, Leitch stated, “I don’t know anything about any murder. I did not kill anyone.”
But the unsworn confession statement that police said Leitch allegedly made was also admitted as evidence.
Attorney Harris suggested to the court that none of the ranks who questioned Leitch had asked the accused if he was literate. Sergeant Conway, who gave evidence, acknowledged that he had not asked Leitch if he could read or write. He was also unable to say if Sergeant Bowman (retired), who took the statement, had done so.
The sergeant stated that he and Retired Sergeant Bowman read the statement to Leitch and informed him that he could request to alter, correct or change it.
The witness added that the statement was also given to Leitch for him to read, and that he looked at it as though he was reading.
“You are not being truthful to this court,” Leitch’s attorney told the sergeant, who responded: “I am telling the truth and nothing but the truth.”
Statements from the woman who claimed Leitch had sold her a cell phone, and statements from the woman who had stayed at the hotel room with the accused, were also presented at the trial. However, none of the two women appeared to testify.
On April 17, 2018, Leitch was found guilty on the lesser charge of manslaughter. A month later, Justice Sandil Kissoon, the presiding judge, sentenced him to 33 years imprisonment.
Before the sentence was handed down, Attorney Harris pleaded with the court to consider his client’s “hard upbringing”, as well as his age and the time he had already spent in prison.
A probation report stated that Leitch came from a single parent home.
The accused was said to have gravitated to crime at an early age, and he was sentenced to serve time at the New Opportunity Corps.
According to the report, after his release from the NOC, Leitch tried his hand at several skilled jobs, but soon returned to wrongdoing.
In calculating the sentence, Justice Kissoon deducted five years for the time the accused was on remand. However, he added three years because of Leitch’s criminal record and five years “for cruelty used in the commission of the crime.”
THIS IDIOT TELLING GUYANA WE HAVE NO SAY IN THE 50% PROFIT SHARING AGREEMENT WE HAVE WITH EXXON.
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