A man charged with a shooting death went to “scope out” his target before gunning him down, prosecutors alleged yesterday.

Kiari Tucker, 27, denied the 2017 murder of Marlon Steede, 35, and the use of a firearm to commit an indictable offence.

At the start of his Supreme Court trial yesterday, the jury heard that Mr Steede was chased through the One Way Deepdale area of Pembroke and was killed on the night of November 3, 2017.

Carrington Mahoney, for the Crown, asserted that the shooting was a deliberate and co-ordinated attack and Mr Tucker had pulled the trigger.

He suggested that Mr Tucker had gone through the neighbourhood to look for Mr Steede before opening fire, then chased him down and shot him three times.

Mr Mahoney said that the Crown believed Mr Tucker went back to the Spinning Wheel on Court Street after shooting Mr Steede, who died from his injuries.

At a subsequent post-mortem, three bullets were extracted from Mr Steede’s body.

Mr Mahoney added that police arrested the defendant the following day when they attended his house and, after ordering the residents out of the premises, found him “hiding under a pile of clothing”.

Sean Patterson, a senior land surveyor with the Bermuda Government, was the first witness to take the stand.

He told the court that his field, which he had been in for 22 years, involved judging and mapping out the distances between objects.

Mr Patterson said that he was asked in March 2019 to offer “extractions” of a particular area.

The map, which scaled 800 inches of land down to an inch on the page, honed in on the northern half of Pembroke and offered locations and distances.

The map, Mr Patterson highlighted, had two routes between Deepdale Lane East and the Spinning Wheel.

The first route showed the straightest distance between the two points, while the second showed how one could travel using the main roads.

Mr Patterson said that the fastest route could take about two minutes to traverse by vehicle and 12 to 13 minutes by foot.

Charles Richardson, for the defence, pointed out that the map did not show the terrain of the area, which Mr Patterson confirmed.

Mr Richardson then asked if the witness believed the neighbourhood was “densely packed” with closely grouped homes, high walls and hedges. Mr Patterson said “yes”.

Mr Richardson said that these factors would make the walk “a lot longer than 13 minutes”.

He added: “Let’s be clear, you can’t just walk that straight line, can you?”

Mr Patterson agreed with both statements.

A second prosecution witness, Detective Sergeant Jewel Hayward of the of Bermuda Police Service forensic support unit, testified that he collected a number of items of evidence, including a pair of jeans and a black jacket, that were sent to a laboratory for DNA and gunshot residue testing.

Mr Hayward also said that he attended a post-mortem on Mr Steede conducted by forensic pathologist Michael Pickup. During that examination three “copper-jacket projectiles” were extracted from the victim’s body.

The trial continues.

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