Nigel Christian – By Latrishka Thomas
Nigel Christian Told Brother
The man at the centre of one of Antigua and Barbuda’s most closely watched murder trials was remembered on day nine of proceedings as a quiet, private person who loved his job, cherished his family, and kept mostly to himself but who had confided to his brother that tensions at work were running high in the months before he was killed.
A sister of slain senior Customs official Nigel Christian took the stand primarily to confirm that she identified her brother’s body. She described him as strict, reserved, and someone who did not socialise much, but who had a deep love for his nieces and nephews, a passion for photography, and a dedication to his work. She confirmed he had been investigating Customs fraud but told her he had finished that work before he was abducted and killed.
A brother of the deceased painted an equally telling picture. He told the court that after hearing news of what had happened on July 10, 2020, he went to Nigel’s McKinnons home and immediately noticed the CCTV recorder was gone and the locks on the kitchen door had been busted.
Perhaps most significantly, he confirmed under cross-examination that following the death of another Customs officer in 2019, Nigel had told him he needed to be vigilant and careful because tensions were running high at work.
The day’s proceedings began with the continuation of examination in chief from a digital forensics expert whose credibility came under sustained attack. The corporal, attached to the Regional Cyber Investigations Laboratory, testified about his retrieval of surveillance footage from several locations including the Chinese Embassy and a business place on Marble Hill Road, as well as the home of a man who lived near Christian.
On the previous day, video footage from the Chinese Embassy on Marble Hill Road had been played before the court, showing what the Crown contends is Christian’s truck being discreetly followed by the cooperating witness driving a silver car. Footage from a nearby business also captured a similar sequence after 5 pm. However, the licence plates of the vehicles were not visible.
The court was also shown footage retrieved from a camera belonging to a man who lived on the same road as Nigel Christian. The footage showed a car passing in an eastward to westward direction at around 5:30 pm, and then what appeared to be a similar vehicle returning in the opposite direction, west to east, just a few minutes later. The neighbour’s home sits to the west of where Christian lived, suggesting the vehicle had travelled past Christian’s residence and returned along the same road within minutes, a detail the Crown is likely to argue is consistent with the movements described by the driver on the day of the killing.
During cross-examination, defence attorney Sherfield Bowen extracted a series of damaging admissions from the witness. The corporal confirmed he had been transferred from the cyber lab and only returned after the supervisor who had him moved had left, with Bowen suggesting this was because he had tampered with evidence, which the witness denied. He acknowledged that he had only extracted footage from the 5 to 6 pm window at the specific request of investigators and did not believe footage from earlier in the day would have been relevant.
Bowen also questioned why the officer had not searched for footage of a white RAV4, a vehicle the prosecution’s cooperating witness had testified was used to collect one of the accused after the killing. The officer said he had not looked for it.
Defence attorney Wendel Alexander, representing Harrigan, questioned the officer about the examination of the phone belonging to the brother of the key witness, establishing that the phone had been submitted for examination.
An officer who executed search warrants at the residences of the accused also gave evidence. A ski mask was recovered from Thomas’s home, with officers noting it appeared consistent with one used in the commission of a crime. The men were taken to St. John’s Police Station on suspicion of robbery.
The defence challenged the circumstances of the search and arrests, with Bowen suggesting the ski mask had been planted at Thomas’s residence pointing out that no DNA from Thomas was found on it. The defence also challenged whether proper evidence procedures had been followed and questioned the legal basis for arresting the men for a general robbery without specifying which robbery was alleged to have occurred.
Another officer gave brief evidence confirming that DNA samples were taken from the accused for testing purposes.
The case against Saleim Harrigan, Wayne Thomas, and Lasean Bully centres on the Crown’s allegation that the three men abducted Christian from his McKinnons home on July 10, 2020, and shot him dead on a dirt road in Thibou’s later that afternoon.
The trial has previously heard from a witness who testified that he drove the 3 accused men on the day of the killing. He told the court that he followed discreetly behind the group as they drove Christian’s own truck after abducting him from his McKinnons residence. He claimed to have watched the accused scale the fence at Christian’s home and forcibly take him before driving away in the victim’s vehicle. He later came upon Christian’s bloodied body on the dirt road in Thibou’s. After the killing, the witness testified that he was contacted by the men and instructed to collect them from the location where they had abandoned the victim’s truck, after which he transported them to their separate destinations.
The witness also told the court that he had been communicating with police about a murder plot against Christian in the weeks before it happened, that he was instructed by Harrigan to change the licence plates on his rental vehicle, and that he had been asked to purchase gasoline to burn bags containing items connected to the crime-bags he later directed police to at Perry Bay. When asked directly who had ordered the killing, the witness said Saleim Harrigan told him it was businessman Raymond Yhapp.
An FBI expert in cellular telephone mapping also gave evidence, with analysis tracking the phone activity of the accused and the cooperating witness to locations consistent with the movements described on the day of the murder. That evidence appears to corroborate the driver’s account of where the group travelled throughout the day, placing their devices in geographical areas that align with the sequence of events the prosecution has laid out.
Crime scene photographs shown during the trial depicted Christian lying on the dirt road with gunshot wounds to his face, spent shell casings scattered nearby, and his truck later found abandoned in bushes in Cassada Gardens. Items including a black hoodie, gloves, a dark blue tam with two holes cut into it, and a white envelope containing a LIAT ticket stub bearing the name N. Christian were recovered from locations connected to the case.
The Crown is represented by Director of Public Prosecutions Clement Joseph and Crown Counsel Curtis Cornelius. Bully is represented by Michael Archibald, Thomas by Sherfield Bowen, and Harrigan by Wendel Alexander.
The trial, which is expected to last approximately 6 weeks and could call more than 50 witnesses, continues before Justice Rajiv Persaud.
