Amancia Martinez Opens Up About Paguada Brothers Murder Convictions

Brothers Delson and Tionne Paguada were convicted of the murder of Paul Jex in the High Court on Monday.  Another suspect, Timothy Carcamo, was set free because he could not have been positively identified as the third person at the scene of the deadly shooting in San Pedro on the evening of January twenty-third, 2018.  When the decision came down that both of her sons were guilty, Amancia Martinez fainted and had to be revived by officers who are assigned to the courts.  It was a dramatic scene, an inconsolable mother watching helplessly as her only children are being dragged away to prison.  Tonight, we speak with  Martinez who shares her perspective on the outcome of the trial.

On the phone: Amancia Martinez

On the phone: Amancia Martinez, Mother of Paguada Brothers

“I am not happy and I am not like those kinds of mothers who will fight for their kids.  My sons, if dehn mi do this crime, let them pay the time, but my kids were sent to prison innocently.  That’s the reason I’ve been fighting for that case.  The witness who testified against my kids, she not even mi know di statement she write five years and seven months ago.  2018, the twenty-third of [January] 2018, the crime was put on my sons, when my kids were here on the island.  That witness said in her statement that she knows my kids for more than twenty years, before I had them.  And that time, my small son, Tionne, was only fifteen years old.  Delson was just turning nineteen years old.  So now, the sixth of June, that was the day when my son, Tionne, turned twenty-one.  That was the day when the trial was started.  So everything that she write in her statement, twelve years and seven months ago, she said she doesn’t remember.  And also, she told the judge that she didn’t record the statement, that she doesn’t remember that she recorded that statement.  Also, she tell di court ihself that she was taken in a white vehicle out of the police station to go and record that statement outside of the police station eena wahn private house.  So I this, yesterday, was a setup against my kids.  This was a setup.”