A 12-MEMBER jury was empanelled on Tuesday for the 2014 murder trial of 55-year-old Donna Taylor whose body was found aback her Agricola home with her throat slit and her hands tied behind her back in a home invasion during which a female guest had to jump through a window to escape.

On trial for the alleged murder is 27-year-old former Guyana Defence Force Private, Abiola Jacobs called “Abby”.

At the start of the trial the son of the deceased and ex-boyfriend of the accused, Bertram Taylor Jr. testified before Justice James Bovell-Drakes in the Georgetown High Court.

The state is being represented by Mandel Moore in association with Lisa Cave, while the defence attorney is Adrian Thompson. Fourteen witnesses are expected to take the stand.

Police reported that Taylor’s body was found aback her Agricola home on Friday, January 31, 2014 with her throat slit, and her hands bound behind her. The cause of her death was given as shock and haemorrhage due to incised wound to the neck compounded by blunt trauma to the head.

According to the police report, Sabatt, Taylor’s friend, who had been a guest at her home at the time of the incident, was injured when she jumped from the window of the Lot 16/17 two-storey house in Agricola after persons had invaded the property.

Jacobs, of Lot 55 Evan Phillips Park, Agricola, East Bank Demerara, was the girlfriend of the dead woman’s son, but the young man had recently broken off the relationship with her because of her aggressive attitude towards him.

It was reported that the young man had shared a very close relationship with his mother, and because of that relationship, the suspect was of the view that the woman had influenced her son’s decision to sever the relationship.

Sabatt had travelled to Guyana from the United Kingdom to attend the funeral of her father and was staying at Taylor’s residence. She decided to jump through the window after the persons who came into the house were attempting to break down the door to the bedroom in which she had secured herself.

However, when the woman jumped through the window, she got injured and was hospitalised.