Friday, July 28, 2006

by Kenton Chance
Caribbean Net News St Vincent Correspondent
Email: kenton@caribbeannetnews.com <kenton@caribbeannetnews.com>

KINGSTOWN, St Vincent: The preliminary inquiry into the murder of Glenn Jackson, former press secretary to Prime Minister Dr Ralph Gonsalves was among hearings disrupted at the Kingstown Magistrates Court after an early morning fire last Friday.

The hearing was slated for last Monday but all Magistrate Court sittings throughout St Vincent and the Grenadines were suspended from last Friday, with three courts outside Kingstown resuming hearings on Tuesday.

Local authorities were this week assisted by their Trinidadian counterparts in trying to determine the cause of the blaze at the building housing the Kingstown Magistrates Court, the Serious Offences Court, the Family Court and all administrative offices of the Magistracy in capital Kingstown.

Police say an unidentified person notified them of the fire about 7 a.m. last Friday and when firefighters, stationed about 500 yards away, arrived the building was engulfed in flames, with the fire concentrated in the records room.

Sources indicate that many of the records at the building were destroyed, notwithstanding a desperate effort by firefighters and police officers from the Special Branch, Special Services Units as well as prisons to remove
files and equipment from the two-storey, concrete-roofed building.

Reports indicate that some records were salvaged from the offices of the Serious Offences and Family Court and that there was no serious structural damage to the rooms where the actual court sittings were held.

"Due to the valiant and prompt efforts of the authorities, including the Police and the Fire Department, most of the courts' records were salvaged," Acting Chief Magistrate Sharda Bollers said in a written statement.

Another high profile case affected by last week's blaze is the preliminary inquiry into the alleged rape of three female American visitors (a woman and two of her daughters) in June, which was slated to begin in Kingstown today, Friday July 28.

Four men are charged with two counts of rape, one count of grievous bodily harm and one count of wounding and face a maximum of life imprisonment because the incident, which reportedly took place while the female and other members of their family were climbing the La Soufrière volcano north of Kingstown.

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