MLA tried to trick wife to lure her from lover

(CNS): Dwayne Seymour tried to trick his wife into thinking he was in the hospital the night he went to find her at a Seven Mile Beach hotel, where he believed she was in a room with her lover. On the second day of his Grand Court trial for attempting to pervert the course of justice, the Bodden Town MLA took the stand and admitted that he had cooked up a plan that he had been hit by a car in an effort to tear her away from Garrone Yap, whom Seymour believed she was with on 1 May last year. Seymour told the court that he had attended the Batabano celebrations earlier that day and learned afterwards that his wife had been seen with Yap and was probably having an affair.

Seymour said he did not know where his wife, Melanie Seymour, was that day but someone who worked for him as a security guard at the airport had seen Yap there and implied he might be with Seymour’s wife. The MLA denied using his public office to find out where Yap was staying via immigration records at the airport and said he had not headed straight to Beach Suites. The MLA said he had called a number of hotels first before he had gone there and seen his wife’s car parked outside.

The Bodden Town representative said there were problems in his marriage which he was trying to resolve. His original goal when he arrivedat the hotel, he said, was to get a picture as evidence of her infidelity. With that in mind, he said, he called his friend Hartwell Minzett so that they could swap cars. Then Melanie would not realize he was there and when she came down he could get the picture.

Seymour denied going to the hotel to confront Yap but said, “I was concerned and I was trying to find my wife. We had two kids at home and I didn’t know where she was,” he told the court. He revealed, however, that he and his wife had communicated by text but she would not say where she was.

Seymour told the court that he implied he had been run over by a car and was in the emergency room in a text to his wife as he waited in the car park of the Grand Cayman Beach Suites in the hope that she would come down.

He explained how he then asked his friend Minzett to answer the phone once Melanie began calling him to make what he called the “plan or the scheme” more authentic.

Seymour denied that this ‘plan’ was a lie, despite the fact that he said it was not true that he had gone to the hospital or that he had been hit by a car. Seymour said he did not tell lies as he went to Sunday school until he was twenty-five, and this was a plan or a scheme and he refused to acknowledge it was a lie. “I drummed up a plan to get her to come down, saying it was an emergency,” he said.

Seymour revealed that soon after that he caught sight of someone who might be Yap coming toward him and Minzett. Admitting that he had fought with Yap, Seymour denied having started the punch up and said he was merely defending himself against a man he believed to be a martial arts expert who was being very aggressive towards him.

Once the altercation was over as a result of the security guard breaking up the fight, the MLA said he walked away and said nothing to the security officer. He denied provoking Yap or calling his wife a whore as he said she was the mother of his children. Nor, Seymour said, did he introduce himself to the guard as an MLA before the incident but he admitted that he had asked about the key for a room. That, he said, was because he was concerned about his wife’s safety.

As he gave evidence from the witness stand it became clear that the narrative was different to the one he had given to the police when he went to the station to make report about the fight with Yap. Crown counsel drew attention to a number of inconsistencies. Seymour said he was in a state at the time he gave the report and attempted to explain the various differences in the account he had told in the courtroom to the one he gave to police a year ago.

It was also revealed he had told officers that Yap was a black belt in Karate. He acknowledged that he did not know that to be a fact but he had assumed he was some kind of expert in martial arts. He said he had wanted the matter investigated when the police asked him but denied the crown’s suggestion that he had asked the police to arrest Yap in order to keep him from his wife.

“That’s preposterous” Seymour said in reply.

The case continues in Grand Court on Wednesday afternoon.