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Accused claims he was at home watching DVDs at time of aggravated burglary

Leo Burgess claims he was at home with his mother, watching DVDs, when an aggravated burglary he is accused of being a part of took place.

A teenager charged with using a firearm to steal cash and jewellery told police that he was at home with his mother on the day of the robbery.Leo Burgess, 17, also told police that latex gloves and a red bandanna, matching the description of items found near the scene of the crime, were taken from outside his Cambridge Road home days before the robbery.A DNA expert told Supreme Court that Mr Burgess’ DNA was found on both the gloves and the bandanna.Mr Burgess has been charged with aggravated burglary and possessing a firearm as a minor on December 6, 2010. He has pleaded not guilty to both charges.Victim Gregory Wilson told the court how four men, two with firearms, had held him at gunpoint and demanded cash and jewellery.Describing the men, he said one wore a red bandanna around his face, while both gunmen wore latex surgical gloves.A search of the area revealed two latex gloves and a fragment of a third near the former Sonesta staff quarters. A red bandanna was found inside one of the rooms.As the Supreme Court trial continued yesterday, the jury was shown footage of a January 23 police interview with Mr Burgess.In the interview, Mr Burgess told investigating officers that on December 4 he had been involved in a football game and, after returning home, used a pair of latex gloves to clean his football boots.He told the officers: “I washed the gloves and I left them outside in my mama’s bag and the bag went missing. And a bandanna. A red bandanna.”On December 6, he said he was feeling ill so instead of attending school stayed at home with his mother, watching DVDs.He told the officers he was not involved in the robbery, but had been told by a friend that a robbery had been committed by “Ronnie, Goriko, Taniko and Blaine”.During the interview Detective Constable Emerson Donald, the officer in charge of the case, is heard telling Mr Burgess that his story is “a pack of lies,” and that no judge or jury would believe it.Defence attorney Shade Subair, representing Mr Burgess, asked Det Con Donald if he made those statements knowing the jury would hear it, but he said he was not thinking about a trial at the time.Instead, he told the court he was trying to convince the defendant to come clean.Ms Subair questioned if Det Con Donald had looked into Mr Burgess’ claims that he had heard four other individuals may have committed the crime.He responded that he put the names into the police computer system, but without additional information like last names was unable to proceed further.Ms Subair also asked about a January 22 identification parade at police headquarters in which Mr Wilson failed to identify Mr Burgess as one of the robbers.Det Con Donald also agreed in cross examination that no firearms, stolen jewellery or large sums of cash were found in a search of Mr Burgess’ home.However, he said the search was carried out more than a month after the robbery, and it was unlikely that the search would have yielded positive results.“It’s not impossible, and that’s why a search was done, but I knew it was highly improbable,” he said.Also taking the stand yesterday was DNA expert Candy Zuleger, who told the court that she had compared Mr Burgess’ DNA to that found on the items recovered from the Sonesta staff quarters.She said that the results of tests on the glove fragment did not match Mr Burgess, but that the defendant was a “majority donor” on both the bandanna and the latex gloves.She said she was unable to identify the minor donor on either object, or the DNA on the glove fragment.Samples from the gloves matched 13 out of 15 DNA “markers,” while samples from the bandanna matched all 15 markers, the highest possible match.She said the chances of the DNA on the bandanna being anyone but the defendant are one in 210 quintillion for the black Bermuda population.The defence is expected to begin its arguments when the trial resumes on Monday morning.