Were Veron Primus and Sharleen Greaves friends?

Sharleen Greaves’ accused killer, Vermont resident Veron Primus has been tried and convicted in the court of public opinion.

Since being charged, the public’s jury and judges have not cut Primus any slack, with 95 per cent of the commentators calling for swift action, from hanging to mob justice.{{more}}

Primus was picked up on Friday, April 15th, after it was reported to police that he was holding a young woman captive in his home. Investigations into the detention of this young woman, Mewanah Hadaway, eventually led police to charge Primus for another crime, the murder of socialite Sharleen Greaves.

Reports are that police found Greaves’ jeep keys in Primus’ house.

What caused quite a bit of contention and discussion on social media is the notion, that while a number of Sharleen’s close friends were picked up by the police without being charged, no one ever suspected Primus, whom persons now claim was a close friend of the outgoing young woman.

This publication managed to obtain a photo showing Primus seated at a desk at Sharleen’s Bijou Real Estate Arnos Vale office. In the photo, a smiling Primus poses with a telephone and a Macintosh laptop, while smiling innocently into a camera at a desk, at which Sharlene herself was photographed.

While a few of Sharleen’s friends claim to have seen photos of the accused before, it is uncertain why his name never came up and in his place, a number of the dead woman’s good friends were subjected to rigorous questioning and hours of detention by the police, with Primus’ name never even crossing the police’s radar, although photo evidence of the deceased Greaves and the accused’s friendship existed.

One person on Facebook described the police as “unprofessional with no investigative skills” and wondered how this bit of crucial evidence, the two’s friendship, missed investigators, although it now seems plain.

Since the story broke that Primus was charged, persons took to social media site Facebook, where the fact that police had found in Primus’ possession a key that unlocked and turned over the engine of Greaves’ vehicle seemed enough to convict the deportee, who was shipped back to St Vincent from the United States because of offences committed there.

According to an online publication nydailynews.com, in 2006, Chanel Petro-Nixon, a 16-year-old honour student was murdered.

“Chanel vanished on Father’s Day 2006, on the day she was supposed to apply for a job at a nearby Applebee’s restaurant. Several days later, sanitation workers found her strangled body in a trash bag in front of a vacant building at 212 Kingston Ave. in Crown Heights. There was no evidence of sexual abuse,” said the online publication.

It added, “the closest thing to a break in the case came with last year’s trial of Veron Primus, aka New York State inmate 12A5663, who is serving time at the Adirondack Correctional Facility upstate. According to law enforcement sources, Primus was known to Chanel, and she may have been going to meet him the day she disappeared”.

The publication said that years after Chanel’s killing, two women accused Primus of rape and he went on trial in 2012 and was acquitted of sexual assault charges, but was convicted on several lesser charges of criminal contempt and sentenced to two to four years in prison, “after which he may be deported to Trinidad”.

Persons also took the police to task for allowing Primus to exit the court room without handcuffs.

On seeing a video with Primus leaving the Serious Offences Court after being remanded, Yvonne Caine said, “It seems Vincentian police are more scared of protesters, thieves and persons held for drug possession…”.

Persons also took to Facebook to voice their disgust over Primus being sent back to St Vincent from the US, after spending almost all his adult life there. The reasoning being that his propensity for violence may have been nurtured in the US.

The question was also asked if the local authorities were notified of Primus’ return and his crimes, a point someone said would have been useful, seeing that photos that existed would have put a known sex offender and person of interest in murder investigations on the police radar.

On Monday, Chief Immigration Officer, Stanford Hamilton, speaking to SEARCHLIGHT, said that the public must understand that once a deportee is from St Vincent and is returned here, the Immigration Department has no choice but to allow the person to enter the country. He said that depending on the nature of the offence the person is being deported for, an interview is carried out.

“I believe at the right time the authorities will make a statement on this particular case”, said Hamilton, without going further.

In the meantime, questions are being raised by the public if Primus may have any connection to any other offences here. This is so, even though the offence is prior to his deportation from the United States. One of the names being mentioned is Shanika Small.

Small went missing in October 2011 and a few days later on the Minors Estate in the Welcome/Dauphine area, on Sunday, October 30th, 2011, a body was found and while most persons believe the body to be that of the young aspiring Miss SVG contestant, the police say that DNA evidence to prove that it was Small was inconclusive.

Small’s disappearance is probably one of the most publicized missing persons incidents in Vincentian history, as at the time of her death, persons used the social networks Blackberry Messenger (BBM) and Facebook to sensitize the public.

Apart from mentioning Primus and Small in the same sentence, social media is rife with other theories and questions concerning offences against women.

Even Primus’ lawyers Michaela Ambrose and Moureeze Franklyn have been unfairly ridiculed for representing Primus, throwing the age old adage, “innocent until proven guilty” further out the window.

Given that Primus has seemingly been convicted in the court of public opinion, can he receive a fair trial here? Persons are hoping that the police dot their I’s and cross their T’s and get this one right.