The Tribune

By LAMECH JOHNSON

Tribune Staff Reporter

ljohnson@tribunemedia.net

A WOMAN stabbed on the eve of Valentine’s Day raised her shirt for a jury to see the wounds under her arm and on her back.

The wounds were two of several that 24-year-old Lashan Smith pointed out at the Supreme Court after naming her ex-boyfriend Devon Adderley as the man who attacked her at a traffic light.

Adderley, 26, of Mermaid Boulevard, faces a charge of attempted murder. It is claimed that on Sunday, February 13, 2011, he tried to murder Smith at Jerome Avenue and Chesapeake Road. Adderley denies the charge.

The court heard on Tuesday from prosecutor Eucal Bonaby, in his opening to the jury, that the accused followed her in a borrowed car from church to a traffic light and stabbed her with a knife.

Yesterday, Ms Smith took the witness stand and told the court how the stabbing happened six months after meeting the accused. 

“I met Devon Adderley at Bahamas Faith Ministries, on July 16, 2010,” she said. “After I met Devon Adderley, we became friends. We had started exchanging numbers, getting to know each other, started going out, hanging out at Fish Fry and going by his house in Rock Crusher.”

“Did the relationship continue?” Mr Bonaby said.

“Yes, sir,” Ms Smith answered.

“What happened next?” the prosecutor asked.

“I then informed Devon Adderley that I didn’t want the relationship to move on because it was too intense,” she said, adding “it was too serious, I couldn’t bear it.”

“He started to get upset. He started being very hostile, being very annoying, started attacking me, started stalking me.”

“Where did he stalk you?” Mr Bonaby asked.

“At home, at my church....Kemp Road Union Baptist Church,” she said.

“Did you report it to the police?” the prosecutor asked.

“I reported it to the Carmichael police station and he was ordered to leave me alone,” she said.

She claimed the accused got even more annoying and she continued reporting him to the police to the point where she had to have him bound over to keep the peace.

“Before that, do you recall Sunday, February 13, 2011?” Mr Bonaby asked.

She told the court she was headed home on that day around 1pm after leaving church. She saw a dark coloured Honda that drove behind her and hit her.  

At a complete stop at a red light, she said she saw the accused.

“He came in my direction and he said he was going to kill me. After he said that he started stabbing me,” the court heard.

“Did he say anything else?” asked the prosecutor.

“He say ‘I’m going to kill you! I don’t want no other man to have you! I’m going to kill you!’ He continued to stab me. I tried to defend myself with my arms. The police had to pull him off me,” the woman said, adding that she was in and out of consciousness after the attack.

She told the court that she stayed overnight in the hospital after her wounds were treated and stitched. Ms Smith, when asked by the prosecutor, pointed to where she was stabbed.

She said she was not afraid or uncomfortable with showing the jury the stab wounds that she said she received during the attack and pulled up her blouse on the left side to show scars under her left arm and on her back.

Ramona Farquharson-Seymour, defending, put it to the woman that she was the “intense one” in the relationship with her client. Smith said: “No ma’am.”

“You worked in security at BFM?” the attorney asked. “Yes,” Smith said.

“On that day, after dropping him home, you called him and the two of you talked into the night before saying you were going to bed, is that correct?” Mrs Farquharson-Seymour said. 

“I do not recall,” Smith said.

“Is it possible?” the attorney said. “Yes ma’am,” said Ms Smith.

The attorney suggested that Smith began leaning heavily on Devon Adderley for money. 

Smith disagreed.

“Did you ask him for monies?” Mrs Farquharson-Seymour asked. “I don’t recall,” said Ms Smith.

Mrs Farquharson-Seymour said that Christmas 2010, Ms Smith took Devon to meet her relatives.

“I never took him to meet my family members,” said Ms Smith.

“I’m also suggesting you told Devon, after you both left your sister’s house, you told him your grammy said her spirit took to him,” Mrs Farquharson-Seymour said.

“I don’t recall,” Ms Smith said.

Moving into January 2011, the month of the woman’s birthday, the attorney asked: “Isn’t it correct that you called up ‘Smiley’ and asked him for some money?”

“No, ma’am,” said Ms Smith.

Mrs Farquharson-Seymour suggested the witness had used her client and got angry when she didn’t get her own way. She added that it angered her when Devon went to her pastor about her behaviour.

Smith denied the suggestions and did not recall when he spoke to her pastor.

“Who served the summons (on January 21) to bound him over?” Mrs Farquharson-Seymour asked.

Ms Smith said it was a woman sergeant.

“Your sister?” the attorney asked. “Yes,” Ms Smith replied.

“You agree that a non-relative should have served Devon with a summons?” Mrs Farquharson-Seymour said.

“I agree,” said Ms Smith.

She denied that she and her sister “played” with the legal system to take advantage of Devon Adderley.

She also denied that Adderley pleaded with her on February 12 to leave him alone and that she and her sister kept calling the accused.

Mrs Farquharson-Seymour suggested that Devon came to her church that Sunday to speak with her after the service, but she got riled up in the parking lot and took off in her car before “texting” him minutes later that she was ready to talk and gave him her location.

Ms Smith denied the suggestions and denied that she told the accused that she was waiting for him at a traffic light on Chesapeake Road.

“You’re very manipulative,” the attorney said. “No,” the woman answered.

“When he arrived, you opened the car, he came into the doorway and he told you he was tired of the false allegations,” the attorney said.

“That’s not the truth,” the 24-year-old replied.

“I suggest you pulled the knife from under the car. That is when you pulled the knife and cut him on his elbow,” said Mrs Farquharson-Seymour.

“That is not true,” the woman said.

Mrs Farquharson-Seymour later tried to establish a behaviour pattern with Ms Smith – a history of problems with men as a reason for her short term-span on several jobs between 2007 and 2010, including the Royal Bahamas Police Force and a giftshop on Paradise Island. 

Ms Smith denied being terminated from the police force for pulling a knife on a fellow trainee at the police training college.

“I suggest he (Devon) only struck out at you because you struck out at him,” Mrs Farquharson-Seymour said.

“That is not true cause I never had no knife,” said Ms Smith.

The trial resumes today.