One of the men who was acquitted of the murder of Xtra Foods CEO Vindra Naipaul-Coolman has called on police to reopen their investigation into the murder.
Jamille Garcia made the call yesterday after he belatedly walked out of the Port-of-Spain prison two days after being acquitted.
“They (police) need to do over their investigation because they had innocent men sitting in there for ten years while the real killers walking free. That not fair,” Garcia said.
Garcia and Gloster were released yesterday after their lawyers filed a habeas corpus writ before the court.
The T&T Guardian understands that the five others who were acquitted alongside them — Marlon Trimmingham, Gloster’s brother Shervon Peters, Antonio Charles, Garcia’s brother Keida and Ronald Armstrong — were denied their release due to a similar issue to Gloster and Garcia.
Gloster’s other brother, Devon Peters, was the only one of the accused men who were released after the jury delivered their verdict on Tuesday.
The five men were initially charged with Naipaul-Coolman's kidnapping but the DPP’s office subsequently decided to prosecute them for the murder only while failing to discontinue the kidnapping charges.
Legal sources said that the DPP had filed notices of discontinuance for the kidnapping charges late yesterday afternoon but the five could not be released together with Garcia and Gloster as prison officials were awaiting official documents. They were expected to be released late last night.
Naipaul-Coolman was abducted from her Chaguanas home on December 19, 2006. A $122,000 ransom was paid by her family but she was not released and her body has never been found.
During the trial, which began in March 2014, prosecutors contended that the former Xtra Foods chief executive was held captive in a house in Upper La Puerta, Diego Martin, before she was killed and dismembered.
Throughout the trial defence attorneys raised multiple inconsistencies in the evidence, including the mental health of the State's main witness Keon Gloster, who claimed he was coerced by police into implicating the accused men, and issues over a gun linked to the kidnapping crime scene being planted in one of the accused men's homes.