Days before Christmas, Ricardo Gittens, seeped in childhood memories, painted his bedroom a colour called Morning Sun. It felt perfect for a 32-year-old man who had spent half of his life in prison.
“Christmas and the new year mean everything to me,” said Gittens. “I feel happy and overwhelmed. I’m thankful for everything: life, family, friends – people who are in my life and who were always there for me.”
The soft-spoken, sometimes hesitant young man, who is one of my former students in the Youth Training Centre (YTC), spent the last 16 years and three months in prison waiting for the trial that he thought would exonerate him from a murder charge. That trial never happened.
Ricardo Gittens quit school in 2002 while in form two and moved in with a friend in Arima.
“I found school wasn’t cutting it. I needed money, clothes and shoes. I was doing a trade, welding, but that didn’t feel like my line of work. I operated a car wash in Arima.”
Every night , after work, Gittens said he drank, smoked and limed and then went his way. The teenager began hanging out with two men between the ages of 28 and 32. He had a reason for choosing them.
“I thought they had more brains than me. Unfortunately, they did not. They were ordinary guys – not in a gang; not into crime.”
At least that is what Gittens thought.
“One day, they came to me and told me someone had to die. I don’t know if they had a problem with him, but I was young, stupid, loyal and with the wrong set of people.”
Gittens said he went along for the ride with his two friends and doesn’t know exactly why.
“Things happened so fast. I was drinking the whole day and smoking. I knew what they were going to do. I could have said, ‘No, I’m not going,' but I didn’t. I didn’t look up to them. I looked up to me. I was into money. I had no reason to be there.”
Before the victim was chopped to death and burned at the scene of the crime in Blanchisseuse, Gittens said a voice inside of him kept telling him to "cut out. I still ask myself, ‘Why didn’t I leave?’”
The teen went to work the next day “as normal. I wasn’t worried. No one had seen us.”
Nine months later, in 2006, Gittens was arrested for that murder.
“It was about 5 am. About 14 police came into the house and plenty more were outside. My family was shocked and angry. The police took me to the police station and then called my mother because they knew I was a minor.”
Gittens was 16 years old at the time.
[caption id="attachment_992669" align="alignnone" width="724"] Ricardo Gittens advises young people to choose their friends wisely. - ROGER JACOB[/caption]
He said he believes the police had tracked down the first suspect because he had taken the victim’s phone.
“The first suspect was arrested, and he told the police everything. He told the truth. He said I was there along with another guy who wasn’t arrested. The first guy who spoke to the police died while in Maximum Security Prison (MSP)
