Mom recalls ‘horrific night’

(CNS): The mother of a four-year-old boy shot and killed at a West Bay gas station last year wept openly in court on Wednesday morning when, for the first time, she watched the CCTV footage of the gunman firing at the car she was in with her family. Giving evidence in the murder trial of Devon Anglin, Dorlisa Ebanks-Barnes, the mother of Jeremiah Barnes who was hit in the head during the shooting, told the court that the gunman was not masked and she had seen his face and said it was Devon Anglin. “I recall him coming round the corner and looking me in the eye and pulling the trigger over and over,” Ebanks told the court. “That night was a horrific night for me,” she added.

Ebanks-Barnes echoed her husband Andy Barnes’ evidence given earlier in the week but Jeremiah’s mother told the court that Anglin was not masked and she saw his face clearly when she gave her own evidence from the witness stand. She said he was wearing a hoody-jacket with the hood over his head but as he came round the corner of the Hell Esso gas station shop he was holding the gun in his right hand and was not wearing any kind of face covering.

In his evidence, her husband had stated that Anglin was wearing some kind of handkerchief or bandana around his lower face, which he had adjusted as he emerged from behind the store andstarted shooting. On the CCTV footage that shows the incident, which took place on 15 February last year, the gunman appears to have his face covered. Despite seeing the video, Ebanks did not change her testimony and told the court emphatically that she saw the face of her child’s killer.

Ebanks said she knew Anglin well as they had grown up in West Bay in the same community and had gone to the same schools. She said that she would see him around the district very regularly.

During her evidence in chief, when Andrew Radcliff QC, prosecuting counsel, asked her to tell the court what happened on the night of the killing, she said that as Andy got back into the car after filling it with gas, “Devon came around the corner”, and as the forecourt was well lit, she could see him very clearly.

“He opened fire and tried to kill my entire family,” she said. As the shooting started Ebanks said she began to scream and ducked down below the dashboard as some six shots were fired, as she shouted at Barnes to drive. He then went past the gunman and “drove away for our lives” she said, as they headed to the West Bay police station.

During cross examination when John Ryder QC, Anglin’s defence counsel, put it to her that the gunman was wearing a mask covering his face to the bridge of his nose, Ebanks disagreed and stated emphatically that she had seen Anglin shoot at her and her family. Ebanks told the court that when she gave her statement to the police on the night of the shooting she was not capable of telling them everything but she said she knew who she had seen shoot at her family. “That person, Devon Anglin, has to pay for the death of my child,” she said.

Ebanks also stated that she had seen the grey Honda Accord which belonged to DJ (Darrel Evans) pull into the gas station just before the shooting began but she said she could not see who was inside the car.