Defendant in firearms case attempts suicide
On December twentieth, George “Junie Balls” McKenzie and Eugene “Jackie” Neal appeared in Magistrate’s Court after the two young men were charged with the possession of a prohibited firearm and unlicensed ammunition. The case is a high profile one as it’s the first time that government has hired a private attorney, well known human rights activist Simeon Sampson, to prosecute. During the proceedings, defense attorney Lutchman Sooknandan tried to get the case dismissed on a no case submission but Chief Magistrate Herbert Lord denied the motion, saying there is sufficient evidence for the matter to proceed. Since then a number of witnesses have been called to testify and the case was adjourned until today. But this morning there was a sudden change in schedule when one of the accused failed to show up in court.
Thirty-year-old Eugene “Jackie” Neal never did make it to Magistrate’s Court. Instead the young man was rushed to the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital after he tried to take his life. Shortly after eight this morning, Neal was found inside his house, hanging from the end of a rope. According to Neal’s common law wife it was his sister who found him barely clinging to life.
Fay Butler, Common Law Wife
“She was coming upstairs and she was knocking at the door cause he has the verandah fenced off, she is knocking and no one came to open the door. But then she said she saw the tennis shoe so she wanted to know who was playing with her because she is knocking but no one came to open the door. When she looked through the fencing by the verandah, she saw somebody standing up like they were sleeping. So she wanted to know who is that and if it was somebody who was looking to jack them, so she started to beat harder on the door. And her mother and a young man who stays upstairs were sleeping and the young man wake up and it was he who came to answer the door and when he open the door for the verandah that is when she saw him there.”
Butler says following Neal’s first appearance in court in December, he became very depressed over how the case was going and had told her and his mother that he would rather be dead than go back to prison.
Q: “He told you that?”
Fay Butler
“He told me and his mother. He said we are the only two he will tell. But I talk to him every day, I try talk him out of it. I cried, I begged and it seems like he was coming around.”
He did not like how the case was going because from the beginning he was confident that he would win the case, his part. He did not know about the next boy’s one because he said he has no kind of dealing with the gun and thing; he will just go to court and tell the truth and thing.
But the day of the court when he get in court and the two police start to give evidence in court — the lies, he said it was lies they are saying. And then when Mr. Sooknandan, their lawyer applied to the judge for a no case submission because the police, like he think there was not enough evidence and the lies and thing. And Mr. Lord dismissed it and said yes, they have enough evidence obviously he believes what the police are saying and that is when the depression set in.”
Butler says Neal is semi-conscious and remains in a stable but guarded condition at K.H.M.H.
The case has been adjourned until January twenty-eighth. Meanwhile Neal will not be charged for the action he took but will be bound by law to receive counseling. Police tell News Five this case is not the first time Neal has been in trouble with the law and has been out of prison only about a year.
