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Jury shown defendant’s texts, photos from before shooting

Murder accused Rickai Dickinson carried pictures of guns on his phone, including himself in a gunman-type pose — along with an image belittling “snitches”.

Mr Dickinson, 29, along with 34-year-old Wolda Gardner, is on trial for the premeditated murder of George Lynch. The pair also deny using a firearm.

Mr Lynch was shot on May 5, 2010 as he stood outside a friend’s house on Midland Heights Crescent in Hamilton Parish.

A rough time of his death, shortly before 10.30pm, was marked on the schedule of telephone exchanges between phones belonging to the two accused on the night of the shooting, and later collected by police.

Phones were seized off the two men on May 8, and their data extracted by police forensic examiners on May 10.

Among the exchanges shown to the jury yesterday was a text from Mr Gardner’s BlackBerry, sent to Mr Dickinson at 10.23pm on the night of the shooting, which read “I am coming east tomorrow to get the dog”.

Earlier in the trial, a former member of the gang East Side Crew — now under witness protection — told the jury that “dogs” had been a slang term for firearms in the St George’s area gang.

Also admitted as evidence were photographs taken from Mr Dickinson’s phone, including a picture of the defendant standing with his hand pointed out in front of himself, an image of a gun, and a picture of a traffic sign reading “stop snitches”.

Crown counsel Nicole Smith also read in a statement from US forensic analyst Janice Johnson, in which a gun, bullets and items of clothing that had been seized in connection with the investigation of Mr Lynch’s murder.

The gun, an Astra A-100 pistol, was sent in for forensic testing with a magazine and five cartridges. The weapon and clothes were swabbed for DNA, and the clothing was also checked for gunshot residue.

A report from firearms examiner Dennis McGuire concluded that a fired cartridge case sent to him could be linked to the Astra pistol.

A spent projectile “could have been fired in this pistol”, Mr McGuire’s report concluded — but a positive identification couldn’t be made, “probably due to its rusty barrel condition”.

The trial continues.