Former deacon back in court November
DONOVAN Jones, the 47-year-old former deacon of the Church Dayton Diamond Ridge and his teenage co-accused in the human trafficking case involving a 13-year-old girl, are to return to the Home Circuit Court in November, when a trial date is expected to be set.
When the four – who are on bail – appeared before Justice Marva McIntosh Thursday, the matter was set for November 3, after the Crown informed the court that it had two outstanding statements to be collected.
Jones, who allegedly supervised the repeated sexual assault of the girl in the back of a van, and the boys involved – James Rogers, 18; Shamar Morgan, 18; and a 14-year-old – were slapped with sexual assault charges in the Half-Way-Tree Resident Magistrate’s Court earlier.
But when the matter was transferred to the Circuit Court last month, those charges were dropped by the director of public prosecutions and replaced with five counts of trafficking in human.
On Thursday, attorney Paul Beswick made an application for the return of the van – in which the alleged incident took place – to its owner, noting that it has been at the government forensic lab since July.