The Tribune

By LYNAIRE MUNNINGS

Tribune Staff Reporter

lmunnings@tribunemedia.net

A GRIEVING mother yesterday welcomed the Office of the Director of Public Prosecution’s decision to appeal a direct acquittal and a judge’s refusal to hear an anonymous witness application in the trial of two men once accused of killing her eight-year-old son.

Kendra Woodside described the appeal decision as a “step in the right direction”, even as she continues to struggle with being excluded from the collapsed trial into her son Eugene Woodside Jr’s slaying.

“I will allow them to do what they have to do,” she said, but adding that she wouldn’t call herself happy.

Director of Public Prosecutions Cordell Fraizer confirmed yesterday that an amended appeal was filed last Friday, expanding an earlier challenge which had focused solely on the witness anonymity issue. The matter is set to be heard in the Court of Appeal next Wednesday (December 17).

Ms Fraizer said the original appeal against the refusal to hear the anonymous witness application was filed and served last Monday, before the judge directed the acquittals. It was amended last Friday to include the acquittal itself.

Mrs Woodside previously revealed that she learned of the directed acquittals of Lloyd Minnis and Perry Pickering only after waking to messages and social media posts last week. She described the moment as reopening her deepest wound, saying it “feel like the day I watched my child bleed out.”

She said she received no phone call or notice that the trial had begun, after years of being told it would not start before 2026. The case opened and closed without her knowledge when prosecutors gave no opening statement and called no witnesses.

Explaining why the child’s mother was not notified of the proceedings, Mrs Fraizer said: “The mother wasn’t informed because the prosecutor never imagined that the court would proceed to hear a matter it had an inability to facilitate at this time. My understanding is that this type of trial will be capable of being heard next year, January 2026.”

Mrs Woodside’s son had been doing homework in their Chippingham home in 2017 when a stray bullet tore through a wall and struck him in the chest. Pregnant at the time, she held him as he died, an event that sparked national outrage.

Ms Woodside said the loss shattered her family: her daughter, who witnessed the shooting, needed years of help, and her marriage did not survive the trauma.