Two on trial for rape, murder of schoolgirl, nine

NINE-YEAR-OLD ‘Sade’ left her parents’ home at Mocha/Arcadia on Friday November 2, 2007 for primary school, but never returned.

Three days later, a search party found her partly nude body in a drain and a subsequent post mortem revealed that she was raped and murdered in furtherance of a felony.
Two youths from the village of 10 Field, Barnwell North, Mocha/Arcadia, Jevon Wharton, then 14 and now 21, and Charles Cush, then 16 and presently 23, have been indicted with the murder.
They have pleaded not guilty and are being represented by attorneys-at-law, Mr. Raymond Ali and Mr. George Thomas at the Demerara Assizes.
Senior State Counsel, Mrs. Judith Mursalin in association with Mr. Mark Conway, both from the Chambers of the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), are appearing for the Prosecution.
Justice Navindra Singh is presiding over the trial.
Mursalin told the jury, in her opening address, that the girl’s father, Eric Stoby joined in the search for his daughter but she was nowhere to be found.
Resumed searching
On Sunday, around 05:00 hrs, Stoby and his eldest son, Cavlan, resumed searching and, as the former reached the bridge at Sixth Field, he began smelling something. He followed the scent and that led him to a drain which was about four feet wide.
There were flies in the area and it was there, in that drain, Eric Stoby came upon the body of his daughter in the water. She was still wearing her school uniform but it was pulled up to her waist and she was naked from there down, her legs sprawled apart and her vagina exposed.
Her schoolbag, her tights and underwear were about two feet away from her in the water and a pair of black shoes were about 20 feet away from her body.
All that Eric Stoby and his son Cavlan could do was holler. Eric Stoby lifted Sade out and Police arrived and took her body away in a hearse, the Prosecutor narrated.
The following day, Government Forensic Pathologist, Dr. Nehaul Singh performed the autopsy and found the bloated body had bleeding to the front of her head, the muscles at the back of her neck and to the muscle at the middle of her chest between the fifth and sixth ribs.
Thick black mud was in her trachea and bronchhoi and her stomach was filled with black mud. There was blood in her vagina and her hymen was recently ruptured.
Her intestines were protruding through her anus and Mursalin said Dr.Singh formed the opinion that there was evidence of blunt trauma to Sade’s head, bruising to the vagina indicating sexual activity just before death.
She said the doctor had given the cause of death as asphyxiation due to submersion compounded by blunt trauma and the case for the Prosecution is that the nine-year- old Sade had been raped and murdered in furtherance of the felony rape, a crime of violence.
The case is continuing today, and a mixed jury sitting with the judge.

(By George Barclay)