FRIDAY, AUGUST 18, 2023
VOLUME 117, No.33
Building an Art culture Page 2
www.thevincentian.com
Mitch guilty: Lawyer upset Page 4
SVBL Guinness on top Page 13
EC$1.50
‘Pan on D’ Street’ Page 14
Two more drownings Page 28
Murder victim Arianna Taylor-Israel and Mitchel Israel were married for twenty years and had two sons. Lewis represented the accused while Richie Maitland, an attorney attached to the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), led the case for the Crown. by HAYDN HUGGINS
Mitchel ‘Mitch’ Israel now await sentencing having been found guilty of murdering his wife.
ALMOST THREE YEARS after Cuban national Arianna Taylor-Israel was gunned down on the compound of the St. Martin’s Secondary School in broad daylight, her husband Mitchel ‘Mitch’ Israel is awaiting sentencing for the murder. A 12-member jury, six men and six women, on Wednesday, found Israel, a former civil servant, guilty of murdering Taylor-Israel, who was employed here as a nurse and was Israel’s wife for 20 years. Upon conviction, Justice Rickie Burnett ordered that a Social Inquiry report on Israel be submitted by September 18 and that sentencing submissions be filed by October 2. Israel is expected to be sentenced on October 13. Surgical Pathologist, Dr. Ronald Child concluded that Taylor-Israel died from multiple gunshot wounds, including one to her neck, one to her chest, and one to her shoulder. The Crown’s case was that Israel deliberately and intentionally shot and killed his wife shortly after 3 p.m. on the date in question, but the defense sought to establish a case of an accident, arguing that Taylor-Israel was shot accidentally during a struggle with her husband. Attorney Dr. Linton
Witnesses for the crown The Crown called 27 witnesses but relied heavily on the evidence of two eyewitnesses — Fidel Akers, at the time a student of the St. Vincent Grammar School, and Mohammed Dowers, then a student of the St. Martin’s Secondary School. Akers told the Court that he was sitting on a rail when he saw a vehicle pulling into the yard of the St. Martin’s Secondary School around 3:30 p.m. When a man alighted from the vehicle, he said the man had something in his hand which he (Akers) later recognized to be a gun. He said there was a struggle between the lady and the man. According to Akers, “They were tugging and pulling for the gun, and the gun went off. The struggle continued, and three more shots went off, and the lady fell to the ground. The man went back into the vehicle and left.” Under cross-examination by Lewis, Akers said, “She grabbed the gun, it was pointed towards the abdomen, and I heard three more shots.” He admitted to hearing four shots in all. Dowers said he saw the woman “fighting up” with Israel and that she slipped and fell, and Israel shot her several times. But under cross-examination, Dowers said he could not recall whether the woman was shot while standing or lying on the ground. He was also unable to recall if there was a struggle, how close the man and the woman were to each other, or if he had given a statement to the police. Continued on Page 3.