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After spending 5 years on remand while he awaited trial, tonight, 22 year old Devon Sankey is at home with his family after he was acquitted in a trial without jury. He was accused of killing 25 year-old Ernan Reneau.

The judge heard evidence that Reneau was shot 3 times in his chest shortly after 10:30 p.m. on April 8, 2010. He was standing on Kut Avenue in front of the gate of his girlfriend's house, when a lone gunman rode up and fired the shots. The main witness for the prosecution was Reneau's girlfriend, Arilee Summerville. But, she had to be treated as a hostile witness after she took the witness stand and said that she could not recognise the person she saw with a gun in his hand picking up a bicycle. In a written police statement, she said that she recognised the shooter as Sankey, whom she has known for about 4 years. In the witness box, she denied that she told the police anything that was contained in the statement. She said that the police were asking her questions at random and she did not know that she was giving a statement.

The prosecution had even more difficulties when they could not produce the original copy of her statement. After arguments from both sides, however, Justice Gonzalez admitted a photocopy of her statement into evidence. But based its contents, the court determined that Summerville's identification of Sankey as the supposed shooter was not very strong.

At that point, Crown Counsel Kileru Awich, who represented the prosecution, closed the case for the Crown after he realised that his main source of evidence was not getting him anywhere in the criminal trial. So when Attorney Oscar Selgado submitted that Sankey did not have a case to answer, Justice Gonzalez upheld the submission and acquitted Sankey.

He was allowed to walk out of court a free man.