The Tribune

By LAMECH JOHNSON

Tribune Staff Reporter

ljohnson@tribunemedia.net

A WIFE has told a jury of the moment her estranged husband ploughed a car into her and her new lover as the pair walked along a city street.

Sheneka Colebrooke saw a “white mid-sized” car heading towards her and her boyfriend, 21-year-old David Rolle, who pushed her out of the way only to be struck by the car himself, a court heard.

The car allegedly turned around and a man Ms Colebrooke identified as her husband, “Mikey”, whom she had known since she was 13, allegedly leapt out of the vehicle and stabbed Mr Rolle and then Ms Colebrooke.

Michael ‘Mikey’ Scott, 45, of Miami, Florida, is on trial for murder and attempted murder in connection with the December 20, 2009 attack in Palm Beach Street.

It is claimed the Jamaican national, who resided in the USA at the time, tried to kill his estranged wife not far from the home where she lived with her mother.

He stabbed Rolle, causing his death, then repeatedly stabbed his wife, the court heard. He denies the charges.

In her sometimes emotional Supreme Court testimony yesterday Ms Colebrooke recalled what led to the fatal attack, which happened some six months after she had met her boyfriend, having left her husband.

She said hours before the attack, at around 8pm, she left home, walked and went by the Fountain of Youth, a bar in East Street.

“Me and David, we went to get something to eat, we played three or four rounds of pool before leaving to go back home,” she said.

“We walked through Ridgeland West, then on to Robinson Road and then on to Palm Beach Street.

“We were walking through the second part of Palm Beach Street...We was walking and David was looking back. I looked back. I saw a white mid-sized car coming to the back and it swerved into us. David.....David pushed me out of the way and the car...it hit him.”

Ms Colebrooke said the car drove down the road, turned around and came back. Michael Scott, her husband, nicknamed “Mikey” jumped out of the car and started attacking her, lifting her up and taking her to the car while she struggled, she told the court.

David, she said, was trying to get him to stop.

Scott managed to get her into the car, she said, then Scott himself got in.

“I don’t know where he (Mr Rolle) got a tyre wrench from, but he got it and then he went around to the back passenger’s glass window and broke it. Michael came of the car and they were fighting, scuffling,” she said.

She got out of the car through the driver’s side, she claimed, and got in between the two men, her back turned to Scott.

Scott was holding her, she said, and began stabbing her in her left side. She said: “David hit him with the tyre wrench to stop him from hitting me.

“When David hit him with the tyre wrench, Michael managed to get it from him. I saw him (Michael) swing it, it hit me and David. David fell and I went on top of him as I didn’t want nothing else to happen to him.

“Michael came over to me and started to stab me.”

She said at this point she was in and out of consciousness, but remembered her husband wiping the knife off with his shirt.

She had seen a lot of blood flowing from David’s stomach area, but did not know he had been stabbed, the court heard.

The court heard she went to hospital with her stab wounds. In court, she pointed to some of the areas where she was injured, including two on her back, one near the spinal cord, one in her upper chest, two under her right breast, her legs and three stab wounds to her head.

Ms Colebrook, when asked by prosecutor Darnell Dorsette, said she had met Michael Scott when she was 13, and had known him for 18 to 19 years. They married in April 2007.

Defence attorney Murrio Ducille put it to Ms Colebrooke that some of what she had said in court, she did not say in her police statement.

Mr Ducille first referred to her testimony where she told the jury that her husband had kicked her and spat on her.

“Do you have that in your statement?” the attorney asked.

“No, I don’t have that in my statement,” the estranged wife replied.

“You told the court Mikey took the wrench from David and struck him with it. Do you have that in your statement?” the attorney asked.

“No,” said Ms Colebrooke.

Mr Ducille later directed his questioning to the paternity of her three children - their surnames being different to that of his client.

Regarding the first child, Ms Colebrooke said that she and Scott were in an “off and on” relationship adding: “The guy I was with said he would sign for her and take care of her if he (Scott) didn’t want to.”

Mr Ducille quizzed the witness about Scott’s report to the police about her boyfriend David and his friend apparently putting a gun to his head when he came to visit.

She told the jury that a gun was never placed to her husband’s head.

Mr Ducille suggested to Ms Colebrooke that she was not being a “truthful witness” after she denied several of his suggestions, including one in which it was put to her that she wrote a letter to Scott saying she was ready to move back to Miami, where she lived with him for some time.

Mr Ducille, going back to the incident, said: “You did not see how David got injured?”

“I didn’t see when he got stabbed, but I saw when he got hit with the wrench,” she said.

Ms Dorsette asked Ms Colebrooke what condition she was in when giving her statement to police.

She said: “I was in pain. I was under drugs. When certain things came back to me, I told them [police] about it, but they never came back to me for additional information.”

The trial resumes today before Senior Justice Jon Isaacs.