Daddy, father, prophet

SMITH... was revered by his flock A witness on Tuesday testified that the late Pathways International Restoration Ministries’ Pastor Kevin Smith was so revered by his flock that some called him “Daddy”, while others addressed him as “Father”, “Dr Smith” or “Prophet of the Nation”. The witness is the second to have taken the stand since last week in the Home Circuit Court trial of Andre Ruddock, who was said to have been Smith’s bodyguard. Ruddock is being tried for murder in relation to the October 17, 2021 sacrificial-type killing of 39-year-old Taneka Gardner whose throat was cut at the church, allegedly on the instructions of Smith, after Gardner confirmed to the pastor that she believed he could bring her back to life. The witness claimed that Ruddock rushed to Gardner and carried out the pastor’s orders after another member of the church hesitated. Two men were also killed at the church on the night, one by the police and another allegedly by Smith, who watched him bleed out and subsequently requested that his body be placed inside a fowl coop. During cross-examination by Anthony Williams, one of two attorneys representing Ruddock, the witness was asked whether Smith told the congregation to call him by several names. “Correct,” the witness, who was shot twice in the back by Smith on the night of the incident, told the court. “He titled himself ‘Prophet of the Nation’,” the witness added. “Were you a junior minister in training?” Williams asked the witness, who confirmed to the attorney that Smith designated him as such. Asked if he accepted that designation by Smith, the witness said, “Yes, I did”, but could not explain what his exact duties were. “I didn’t have any special duties. I would assist occasionally to get him ready, I would sheer his head and I would bring his Bible to the pulpit,” he told Williams, who asked him if he was sure that these were his only activities as junior minister in training. The witness answered in the affirmative. Williams probed, whether “Daddy” was one of the names Smith told him and the other members of the congregation to refer to him as. According to the witness, that question could not be answered with a simple yes or no. “It was just a specific lady that started to call him that, and then other members called him that. I can remember a specific lady called him Daddy or Father and that was on the basis that he was our spiritual father,” the witness shared. Asked about one of four statements he gave to the police, the witness said he outlined that he saw Smith instructing a member of the church, who is also a member of the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF), to hand her firearm to him. “She came directly to him and she handed the gun to him just as he had requested,” he said. Williams managed to pull from the witness a confession that on the day of the incident, he found himself in possession of two firearms at the scene. The attorney asked him if when he arrived at the church he drove a bus. “Correct,” the witness answered. Williams then asked the witness if a gun was placed in a brown paper bag and was in his bus. “Correct,” the witness said, while at the same time admitting that he did not have a licence to operate a firearm. Last week when he began his testimony, the witness told lead prosecutor LaToya Bernard that he, members of his family and other people travelled to the church after being summoned there by Smith via a post he made on a social media platform. In the post, Smith told the members of his congregation that there would be a great flood coming and that they should head to the church for haven. He said that when he got there, Smith told him that he was a demon and should leave the church because he refused to allow his own throat to be cut and after a glass had broken and he was found to be on the wrong side of it. He told the court last week that while walking out of the church, as Smith instructed, he was stabbed in the back by Kevaughn Plummer, a member of the church who was acting on the pastor’s instructions. On Tuesday, the witness said that after he was stabbed by Plummer, he went to his bus to retrieve a brown paper bag that was handed to him by Plummer hours prior to the incident. “I went to the bus to check what was in the brown bag that was handed to me. The brown bag was handed to me by Kevaughn Plummer. The Sunday morning when we were leaving an event that was held on the 16th, was when he handed it to me. Williams asked him to confirm if he went for the gun after he was stabbed. “That is correct,” the witness replied, explaining that after he retrieved the paper bag he threw it over a fence. Williams sought to find out if, at any time, he went to search for the gun that was thrown over the fence. “He [Dr Smith] asked for it. I told him I threw it over the fence and he said I should go and get it. We went [in search of the gun]. At that time it was dark. Another member of the church found it and gave it to me and I was going to give it to Mr Smith,” he said, also telling Williams that when he was in the bushes searching the gun, he did not see any police. Williams pointed to a contradiction between what he said in the witness’s statements and what he was telling the court as it relates to whether or not he saw police when he was in the bushes. The witness told the court that “not everything in my statement is correct, sir. Despite seeing it and reading it, I am saying I did not tell the police that”. Williams chided the witness for failing to use the opportunity to correct any errors in the four separate statements he gave to the police on different days. “You told them it wasn’t correct?“ Williams asked. “No, sir, I did not. The frame of mind I was in I couldn’t even think along that line,” the witness replied, explaining that he was, at one point, questioned for more than 10 hours by the police when he was admitted to Cornwall Regional Hospital after the incident. The attorney suggested to the witness that he conspired with Smith to shoot at the police who had responded to the scene after being alerted. Williams asked the witness whether the gun that was in the paper bag was the only one he had in his possession on the day. The witness said he also had possession of the police woman’s gun at one point when it had become empty. “The gun was empty and Dr Smith handed it to me. It was a black gun. I just had the gun in my hand and when he called for the [policewoman] to come, she came and she took it from my hand,” he said about the gun he had testified that Smith emptied while firing at the security forces before reloading and emptying the magazine again.