Stabroek Market shooting…Police rank further remanded

Oct 11, 2011 News

Police Lance Corporal, Sherwin Smith, who was charged with the murder of drug counselor Ralph Turpin, was yesterday further remanded to prison.
Smith made his second court appearance before Magistrate Sueanna Lovell, at the Georgetown Magistrates’ Court.
After a brief discussion, the matter was adjourned to November 14, for report.
Smith, of lot 434 South Sophia, was not required to plead to the indictable charge of murder when he appeared before Acting Chief Magistrate Priya Beharry, last month.
The allegation was that Smith on September 15, 2011 murdered Ralph Turpin.
The prosecution’s facts are that on the day in question the defendant and three others were at the market when an argument ensued.
Turpin was shot and died as a result of the shooting. Smith had left the scene of the crime but later turned himself into the police, the prosecution disclosed.
Smith is being represented by George Thomas and Senior Counsel Bernard De Santos.
Turpin who was formerly attached to the Phoenix Drug Recovery Centre at Mon Repos, East Coast Demerara, and who ran another half way house on Agriculture Road also in Mon Repos, and a few friends had gone to the Stabroek Market area to buy food after a night out when the incident occurred.
One of the eyewitnesses, Lesley Spooner, who was with Turpin and other friends, recounted that she was in the process of purchasing the food from a road side stall, when another woman who was also buying food, started an argument with her.
Spooner said that one of her companions urged her not to engage the woman but she persisted.
She recalled that the woman who started the argument was brandishing a gun.
“I could remember seeing her with a gun. But this other man had a gun too,” Spooner told this newspaper adding that one of her friends, Karen Busby, who was Turpin’s female companion, was desperately trying to cool things down.
Spooner said that both the man and woman were waving guns, saying, “Y’all don’t know who y’all f…ing with.”
According to Spooner, the man with the gun struck her down with his hand and this led to Turpin, who was sitting in the car, intervening.
“I just hear Ralph say ‘you don’t have to do that’ and then it was, pow! pow!” Spooner recalled.
She said that it was the man who did the shooting but she did not realize that Turpin was the person that was shot.
“I thought was Karen (Busby) he shoot because she was still on the ground,” Spooner told this newspaper. Busby had been knocked down prior to the shooting.
It was only after she saw Turpin also lying on the ground that she realised what had happened.
The terrified woman is thankful that the shooter’s gun malfunctioned or ran out of bullets since he had pointed it to Busby’s head too and kept pulling the trigger but it did not go off.
“I don’t know but when he clicked, it had no more bullets. He would have killed me and he would have killed she (Busby) too,” she said.
The woman and the man, who was later identified as Lance Corporal Smith, then jumped into the car and sped away.

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