Defendant in Ronaldinho Headley murder to appear in St James Circuit Court on February 18
Published:Monday | February 3, 2025 | 4:33 PMChristopher Thomas/Gleaner Writer
WESTERN BUREAU:
Shamar Brown, the man charged for the September 13, 2024, shooting death of St James-based graphic artist Ronaldinho Headley, was listed to stand trial in the St James Circuit Court on February 18, following his committal hearing in the St James Parish Court last Wednesday.
Brown, who was previously on bail in relation to Headley’s murder, was remanded in custody and given a fresh bail offer by presiding parish judge Kaysha Grant-Pryce, at the conclusion of the committal hearing, despite a no-case submission from his attorney Henry McCurdy.
During his application on Brown’s behalf, McCurdy argued that there was no evidence in the case file connecting Brown to the incident where Headley was killed in Hurlock, St James.
“There is nothing in the file that says Mr Brown shot anybody. There is nothing that implicates my client,” said McCurdy. “You cannot assume in a court of law. There is nothing in that file, nothing whatsoever, and it cannot be, ‘it may seem so.’”
In response, the clerk of the court pointed to a witness statement on the prosecution’s case file, which indicated that the alleged sequence of events on the night of Headley’s killing connected Brown to the crime.
Grant-Pryce subsequently set February 18 as the date for Brown’s matter to be heard before the St James Circuit Court and remanded him until that date. She also gave him a new offer of bail in the sum of $800,000, which is like his previous bail offer, on condition that he report to the police three days a week, obey a curfew restricting his movements between 7 p.m. and 6 a.m. daily, and stay out of the Hurlock community.
The allegations are that on September 13, 2024, explosions were heard in a section of Hurlock, and Headley was subsequently found suffering from gunshot wounds. He was taken to hospital where he was pronounced dead.
Headley’s killing took place moments after another shooting incident in the same community, in which shopkeeper Oneil ‘Red Neck’ Howe was shot and killed, and two other men shot and injured, during an attack by gunmen at Howe’s establishment. According to reports, the gunmen alighted from a grey Toyota Axio motor car and fired indiscriminately, killing Howe and injuring the other two men, before making their escape.
Headley, a past student of Hampden Primary School, located on the border of St James and Trelawny, was featured in a March 2016 Gleaner article as a successful participant in that year’s Grade Six Achievement Test mathematics examination. Tragically, he ended up being among the 1,139 murder statistics recorded in Jamaica in 2024.