A jury in Connecticut, US on Friday found a 28-year-old Guyanese man guilty of murdering another Guyanese after only a few hours of deliberations, according to the online publication Republican American.
Parasurama Rabindranauth dropped his head to his chest, his shoulders sagging, as a jury foreman in Waterbury Superior Court announced the verdict, which could mean decades in prison for him.
Lawyers in the case gave closing arguments on Friday. Rabindranauth’s attorney, Martin J. Minnella, said his client never meant to kill 38-year-old Michael Sembhudyal when he shot him while the two stood inside a third-floor Baldwin Street apartment, Republican American said.
The jury ultimately believed the argument by Senior Assistant State’s Attorney Patrick Griffin, who said Rabindranauth was trying to kill when he fired the .38-calibre revolver that sent a slug into Sembhudyal’s chest, heart, lungs and liver. Rabindranauth was arrested in Miami five days after the Jan. 3, 2009, shooting by multiple law enforcement agents, who took him
Rabindranauth, who migrated to Queens, N.Y., when he was 14, never denied shooting Sembhudyal, but said he was terrified of him because Sembhudyal had threatened to have him killed, the report said.
Guyanese Yashoda Ramlal last week told the court that she heard a “pop” and saw her ex-fiance and murder accused Rabindranauth stuffing a gun into his sweatshirt.
According to Republican-American, Ramlal told the court that she heard a “pop” while she stood in a third-floor bedroom of her family’s home.
She said he looked into the kitchen, saw her cousin, Sembhudyal with a look of shock on his face and saw her ex-fiancé, Rabindranauth, stuffing a silver gun into the pocket of his sweatshirt.
“I saw him stumble into the living room, then I saw the blood,” she said of Sembhudyal, according to Republican-American.
