‘Cinders of crime’ left shoe at shooting scene, court told
An accused gunman is the “Cinderella of crime,” because he left one of his shoes at the shooting scene, according to a prosecutor.Carrington Mahoney made the remark as he recapped on the case against Anwar Muhammad, 22, who is accused of shooting and injuring Princeton Burrows in a drive-by shooting on August 23, 2010.Prosecutors allege Mr Muhammad was a member of the Somerset-based MOB while Mr Burrows had links to the rival White Hill Crew, which is based elsewhere in Sandys.Mr Muhammad, a barber, was arrested at his Somerset shop in April 2011 on suspicion of carrying out the shooting.He is now on trial at Supreme Court charged with attempted murder and using a firearm to commit attempted murder, both of which he denies.Eyewitnesses told the court the gunman was still shooting Mr Burrows, then aged 19, even as he tried to crawl away from the attack near Maximart, in Somerset. Between four and ten bullets were fired in total.“Clearly the shooter intended to kill. It was not to scare or to injure. It was a clear attempt to kill Princeton Burrows that day,” Mr Mahoney told the jury.According to him, the evidence against Mr Muhammad is strong enough to identify him as the shooter.Mr Mahoney said most of the eyewitnesses reported that the gunman wore a white sleeveless vest top. Acting on a tip-off, police went to a compound Mr Muhammad’s father owns at Industrial Park Road, Southampton, less than hour after the shooting.There, they found a white sleeveless vest top, a black shirt and the right foot of a pair of Adidas sneakers. This matched a left-footed Adidas sneaker found on the road at the crime scene, according to Mr Mahoney.A DNA expert said Mr Muhammad’s DNA was on the clothes. It was also on both sneakers and Mr Burrows’ DNA was in blood on them.“What a coincidence. Do you remember the story about Cinderella and the shoe? Well here we have the Cinderella of crime. He thought he got away but the shoe was there to link him (to the crime.) You may not want to call him Cinderella, but probably Cinderfella,” said the prosecutor.Mr Muhammad told the jury he kept his clothes in shipping containers at the compound.He admitted the clothes found by police were his, and he wore them on the day of the shooting. However, he said they got wet in the rain and he dropped them off for a friend’s mother to wash.He suggested his brother, Rasheed Muhammad, may have put them on and done the shooting as they look very similar.However, when their father, Anwar Muhammad Sr, testified for the defence, he said Rasheed was in police custody on the day of the shooting.According to Mr Mahoney, that revelation “torpedoed” Anwar Muhammad Jr’s defence.“There we have it,” declared the prosecutor. “This is the man who tried to kill Princeton Burrows that day.”However, defence lawyer Marc Daniels told the jury they could not be sure who the shooter was.He said Mr Mahoney used the words “possibly” and “maybe” a lot during his closing speech.He added that the jury heard no evidence relating to any gunshot residue or fingerprints linking Mr Muhammad to the crime. Neither, he said, had any witness named Mr Muhammad as the culprit.Unlike Mr Mahoney, he said the eyewitnesses were inconsistent in their account of the clothing the shooter wore, and in his view there was “no identification evidence whatsoever” implicating Mr Muhammad.According to Mr Daniels, the DNA expert could not limit the DNA profiles she found to only the victim or the accused man, and could not offer assistance as to how or when the DNA got onto the clothes.The defence lawyer said the prosecution evidence only provided a “snapshot” of the shooting and it is impossible to know how the clothes ended up at Industrial Park Road.He pointed out that although police gang expert Alexander Rollin named Mr Muhammad as a member of MOB based on police intelligence, Sgt Rollin admitted he does not know the accused.Mr Daniels also cited a photograph on Mr Muhammad’s phone showing a haircut he completed for a client at his Somerset barber shop at 4.22pm on the day of the shooting, when the shooting occurred around 3.45pm.He summed up the case as one where one theory cannot disprove another and questioned how the jury could really make a decision as to guilt.He therefore urged them to find Mr Muhammad not guilty.Puisne Judge Carlisle Greaves is due to sum up the evidence today, before sending the jury out to consider a verdict.