An expert on telecommunications evidence said the phone of a man accused of murder pinged off a cell tower serving the area of the crime scene minutes after a fatal shooting.

John McWeeney told the Supreme Court that the phone associated with Kiari Tucker sent out a call at 9.51pm, with the device using a tower at Prospect in Devonshire.

He also confirmed that the Prospect tower was the one with the strongest signal near the junction of Deepdale and Parsons Road, where the murder took place.

However, Mr McWeeney accepted that the area was not the only one where the tower offered the strongest signal.

Mr Tucker, 27, has denied the murder of Morlan Steede, 35, along with the use of a firearm to commit an indictable offence.

CCTV footage played for the court showed Mr Tucker and others at Court Street on the afternoon of the shooting.

However, Mr Tucker walks out of the frame towards the Elliot Street parking lot at about 8.20pm.

At about 9.40pm, CCTV cameras in the Deepdale area of Pembroke recorded a man in black chasing a man in a white shirt down One Way Deepdale and on to Parson’s Road.

During the chase, flashes of light are seen coming from the outstretched arm of the man in black.

Mr Tucker is subsequently seen walking quickly back on to Court Street at 9.53pm.

As the trial continued yesterday, Mr McWeeney explained to the court that for a mobile phone to be used, it has to ping one of a series of masts located across the island.

“As soon as you turn on your phone, you need to be reachable,” he said. “The only way for you to be reachable is for the network to know specifically where you are so it can send you a text message or a call.”

He said that phones automatically connect to the tower with the strongest available signal, with that information recorded for billing purposes.

Mr McWeeney said that the island had a number of masts, each of which is divided into three sections based on direction.

“If someone makes a call and it uses the tower on Eve’s Hill, you could infer that the person was in that location close to the mast,” he said.

However, he told the court that the strongest signal does not always come from the closest cell tower, because the geography of the island and buildings can affect signal.

He took the jury through a report he produced which highlighted which tower had the strongest reception in various areas.

A separate report used a phone similar to that seized in the case to determine signal strength in the Parsons Road area.

Questioned about records related to Mr Tucker’s phone, which was seized the day after the shooting, he said that calls placed at 5.48pm on the day of the shooting indicated that the device pinged off the Seon Place tower.

He said the record was consistent with the device being located on Court Street and images of Mr Tucker using a phone on Court Street at that time.

Mr McWeeney said that it would not be unexpected if the phone were to switch between the Seon Place tower and the Cumberland House tower depending on where the user was on Court Street.

He told the court that, based on the reports, the most powerful signal would come from the Prospect tower for the area of the murder, near the junction of Parson’s Road and Deepdale.

Mr McWeeney said that Mr Tucker’s phone pinged off the Prospect tower at 9.51pm on the night of the murder, when the phone was used for an 83 second phone call.

However, in cross-examination, the witness said that the area was not the only one served by the tower.

The trial continues.

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