–as trial into 2013 ‘Agricola murder’ continues

SEVERAL witnesses took to the stand on Thursday, among them the daughter and son-in-law of the deceased, as the trial into the January 31, 2013 murder of Agricola resident, Donna Taylor, continues in the Georgetown High Court before Justice James Bovell-Drakes and a 12-member jury.

On trial for the murder is 27-year-old former soldier, Abiola Jacobs, called “Abby”.

Marcelle Collymore, daughter of the 55-year-old deceased, told the court on Thursday morning that she knows the accused, since she was a regular visitor to her parents’ Agricola, East Bank Demerara home, and that she knows her by another name, which is “Chucky”.

Collymore also testified that the accused was the girlfriend of her brother, Bertram Taylor Jr, and that she knew her parents’s house-guest, Samantha Sabatt.

Collymore recalled that on January 31, 2013 at around 23:30hrs, she was at her Diamond, East Bank Demerara home when she received a telephone call and had a very disturbing conversation with someone.

The nature of that conversation, Collymore said, caused her to relay certain information to her husband, and together they headed for her parents’ home, where they were greeted upon arrival by a neighbour.

Joined by the neighbour, Collymore said she and her husband went first into the yard, then the upper flat of her parents’ two-storey house, where she saw a severely injured Sabatt lying on a sofa.

On not finding her mother in the house, Collymore said she went in search of her in the backyard. And that’s where she found her; lying on her back with her hand tied behind her, and a shirt wrapped around her neck in an apparent attempt to staunch the flow of blood beneath it.

Collymore related that on seeing the state that her mother was in, she went back upstairs for a sheet and helped place her on it so as to make it easy to take her to the front of the yard. Afterwards, she reportedly helped put her mother and Sabatt in a car so they could be taken to the hospital.

She said that the last time she saw her mother alive was that very day; that she had told her “something”, but that she was otherwise in good health.

Collymore’s husband, Charles, also testified accompanying his wife to her parents’ house in Agricola. He said, too, that the last time he’d seen his mother-in-law alive was at around 17:30hrs the very day, and that she looked normal to him.
According to the police, Taylor’s body was found aback her Agricola home on Friday, January 31, 2013 with her throat slit, and her hands bound behind her.

Cause of death was given as shock and haemorrhage due to the incised wound to her neck, compounded by blunt-force trauma to the head.

The police also said in their report that Sabatt, Taylor’s friend, had been a guest at her home at the time of the incident, and that she was injured when she jumped from a bedroom window of the two-storey house after realising that her life was in danger.

Sabatt had reportedly travelled to Guyana from the United Kingdom to attend her father’s funeral, and was hiding in a bedroom upstairs when the killers tried to get to her by attempting to break down the bedroom door.

The police also confirmed in their report that Jacobs, of Lot 55 Evan Phillips Park, Agricola, was the girlfriend of the dead woman’s son, but that the young man had reportedly broken off the relationship with her because of her aggressive attitude towards him.

Reports are that the young man was very close to his mother, and because of that, the suspect felt that it was she who had influenced him to end their relationship.

The State is being led by Mandel Moore in association with Lisa Cave, while the defence attorney is Adrian Thompson.