According to CNBC, a UBS trader from Connecticut who is charged with manslaughter in the death of a hotel worker in Anguilla failed to return for a court hearing on that British island territory Monday — a month after President Donald Trump said that “something looks and sounds very wrong” about the case.
A spokesman for the trader, Scott Hapgood, said the 44-year-old Darien resident cannot “return to Anguilla to clear his name” because authorities there “will not give him a fair trial or guarantee his safety.”
“He’s not going back,” the spokesman, Jamie Diaferia, told CNBC.
Diaferia said that as Monday’s hearing approached, Hapgood’s legal team had worked to obtain a guarantee that he would be protected if he returned to Anguilla, and that he would be allowed to return to the United States on bail after the hearing ended.
Diaferia said Anguillan authorities declined to give those guarantees and also declined Hapgood’s offer to appear at the hearing via a video link with the Caribbean island.
The case has sparked outrage on Anguilla, where Hapgood’s release on bail was heavily criticized.
“We understand there will be people in Anguilla who say Scott is running from a trial. That is 100% false,” said Juliya Arbisman, Hapgood’s international lawyer.
“There is nothing Scott wants more than to clear his name and get his life back. But he cannot clear his name if he is dead, or if the legal process by which he is bound is fundamentally biased and unjust.”
Hapgood, who is on leave from UBS, is charged with killing 27-year-old Kenny Mitchel on April 13 in the Malliouhana Hotel, while two of Hapgood’s children were in the room.
Hapgood claims that Mitchel, who reportedly was intoxicated by alcohol and cocaine, entered his family’s hotel room under the false pretense of having been sent there to fix a broken sink.
Mitchel then attacked Hapgood — who was a defensive end on Dartmouth College’s football team — with a knife after demanding money, according to Hapgood’s account.
A struggle ensued, and Mitchel died shortly thereafter. The New York Times has reported that Mitchel died from asphyxiation.
But the same coroner later revised that report after toxicology tests, which suggested that Mitchel “had so much cocaine in his bloodstream that he was essentially a dying man when he entered Mr. Hapgood’s suite that day,” the Times reported.
Hapgood, an account manager with UBS Global Management in New York, is free on a $74,000 bond.
Trump first took note of Hapgood on Oct. 14 after the Fox News show “Fox and Friends” — a favorite of the president’s — aired a segment about the criminal case.
“Will be looking into the Scott Hapgood case, and the Island of Anguilla,” Trump wrote in a tweet. “Something looks and sounds very wrong. I know Anguilla will want to see this case be properly and justly resolved.”