Deon P. Green, Gleaner Writer
LONDON, England:
THE OLD Bailey Criminal Court has heard that the man accused of killing seven-year-old Toni-Ann Byfield and Bertram Byfield, both Jamaicans, admitted to a fellow prison inmate that he had committed the murders.
According to fellow prison inmate and former soldier, Graham Ipswich, he was asked by the accused, 32-year-old Joel Smith, of no fixed address, if he had shot any children while he was in the army.
FIVE-YEAR SENTENCE
"He said 'I have done something similar myself'," Ipswich said.
Smith denies murdering Toni-Ann and Bertram Byfield at a bed-sit in Kensal, north-west London, on September 14, 2003.
Serving a five-year sentence for an offensive weapon and affray, Ipswich made the statements while he was giving evidence from behind a screen.
He said Smith, who was also in Walton Prison in Liverpool for assault, told him: "We are alike," saying he was like a soldier on the streets.
Ipswich said he (Smith) said he had gone to a house in London where he shot a fellow and a child.
KNOWN COCAINE DEALER
"I think the man was shot in the chest and I think the kid was shot in the back," Ipswich said. The prosecution alleges that Smith went to the bed-sit in Kensal Green North London to rob or kill Mr. Byfield, a known cocaine dealer, and in the process shot Toni-Ann to eliminate her as a witness.
Two of Smith's former cellmates. to whom it is said he divulged incriminating statements, are down to testify as witnesses during the trial.
