A SMILING Abiola Jacobs walked out of the Georgetown High Court a free woman after a 12-member jury found her not guilty of the alleged January 31, 2014 murder of Donna Taylor.

The accused sprinted down the steps of the High Court with her relatives in tow after the verdict was announced by Justice James Bovell-Drakes.

The group was hugging and jumping up as they walked off into the busy downtown streets and disappeared after the jury returned a not guilty verdict after several hours of deliberations.

After the foreman announced the verdict, the judge told the accused that she was free to go, and she was led away into the corridors of the High Court smiling.

The state was represented by Mandel Moore in association with Lisa Cave while the defence attorney was Adrian Thompson.

Police reported that Taylor’s body was found aback her Agricola home on Friday, January 31, 2014 with her throat slit, her hands bound behind her and a cloth wrapped around her neck.

According to the police report, Samantha Sabatt, who had been a guest at the deceased’s home at the time of the incident, and who was the state’s star witness, placed the accused at the scene on the night in question. She further said she jumped from the window onto the veranda of the two-storey house in Agricola after she heard a man’s voice saying “open the door” and knew she was in danger.

Jacobs, of Lot 55 Evan Phillips Park, Agricola, East Bank Demerara, was the girlfriend of the dead woman’s son, Bertram Taylor, Jr. but the young man had reportedly broken off the relationship with her and was at the time seeing Sabatt who was a guest at their house.

Sabatt had travelled to Guyana from the United Kingdom to attend the funeral of her father and was staying at Taylor’s residence back then.

A post-mortem conducted by Dr. Nehaul Singh gave the cause of death as shock and haemorrhage due to an incised wound to the neck, compounded by blunt force trauma to the head.