By Barbara Gayle, Staff ReporterTHE CROWN closed its case yesterday at the trial of 34-year-old policewoman Viris Christie who is being tried for the murder of 25-year-old Natasha Stephens, cosmetologist, of apartment J, 17 Hopedale Avenue, Kingston 6.
The trial got under way last week Monday.
Defence lawyers Valerie Neita-Robertson and Carolyn Reid made an application yesterday to Miss Justice Kay Beckford for Christie's ballistics expert to examine the firearm and spent shells tendered in evidence in the presence of ballistics expert, Superintendent of Police Fred Hibbert who testified at the trial this week.
SPENT SHELL
Supt. Hibbert had said that he examined a 9 mm Browning semi automatic pistol and spent shells and found that the spent shells were discharged from the pistol.
The Crown represented by Paula Llewellyn, Senior Deputy Director of Public Prosecutions and Simone Wolfe, Crown Counsel, led evidence before the jury at the trial in the Home Circuit Court that the pistol was issued in August 1999 to Christie for her to keep and carry. Policemen testified that they recovered the spent shells in the vicinity where Stephens' body was found under the Portmore Causeway on the morning of September 21, 1999.
LOVE AFFAIR
It is being alleged that Stephens was murdered between September 20 and 21, 1999 because she was involved in a love affair with Christie's Nigerian husband.
The last witness for the Crown was Deputy Superintendent Wrenford Robinson who arrested and charged Christie with Stephens' murder.
Cross-examined as to whether he learnt at the time he interviewed Christie's husband that his mother was shot and killed in Italy, Supt. Robinson said what was important during the interview was whether he was in the island or off the island at the time when Stephens was murdered. He said that the travel documents and checks at the airport showed that Christie's husband was not in the island when Stephens was murdered.
