Man pleads guilty, accomplice pleads not guilty after three days of murder trial

Angel Manuel Maldonado Nieves pleaded guilty to the “brutal murder” of Miguel Olivero, 37, who was chopped to death on October 27, 2013 at a bar on Dickenson Bay Street.
The 32 year old man admitted to the crime as the trial pushed into its third day in the High Court before Justice Keith Thom where witnesses recounted the violent, bloody nature of the cutlass attack.
Having pleaded guilty, Nieves was remanded to prison and his sentencing is set for September 28, 2018, while the jury trial continues today against his co-accused 41 year old Facunda Guerrero.
An eyewitness, who knew the deceased and one of the accused men, testified that it was between 9:30 and 9:45 p.m. on the day of the incident and he was at the bar sitting at the counter when someone came and touched him on his back.
He said when he turned around he saw the two accused armed with cutlasses and the victim had a knife in his hand.
The cutlass wielding men started attacking the victim who picked up a bar stool and was trying to fend them off, the witness said. The man recalled that although Olivero had the knife in his hand, he didn’t use it.
That witness said he too was trying to stop the attack by using a stool also and then he started throwing bottles at the men who had the cutlasses. The court heard that the victim then ran out the bar and his attackers ran after him.
Yesterday, another witness who was on Popeshead Street at a restaurant, said he saw when the victim came around the corner and fell in the middle of the road in the vicinity of AJ’s Smokehouse.
He got up and ran over to the line shop by the corner and then saw two “Spanish guys running coming from around the corner.”
The witness said that when the victim saw the men, he raised his hands in the air but they proceeded to chop him in what the man told the jury was  a “brutal attack”.
He said “the short thick man was the more aggressive” in that he dealt the victim chops to his head, neck and hands; while the “tall skinny one” dealt him chops to the legs and back.
According to the report of Pathologist Dr. Lester Simon, Olivero’s cause of death was exsanguination since he had lost so much blood due to the numerous injuries.
Overall, the victim had 27 to 30 lacerations. One of the wounds to the head fractured the skull and exposed the brain and two chops to his left arm also fractured bones.
According to one of the surgeons who operated on Olivero after he was rushed to hospital by a friend in a pickup, medical staff transfused 11 units of blood, two units of plasma and 24 litres of intravenous fluids in an effort to save him.
The victim was said to be bleeding profusely even as medical staff tried to treat him and suture his wounds. The Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) Anthony Armstrong and Crown Counsel Shannon Jones-Gittens are prosecuting the case which is being defended by attorneys Ralph Francis and Sherfield Bowen who represent Nieves and Guerrero respectively.