A torture victim yesterday told a Supreme Court jury of being tied up in a cellar and beaten and burned for hours.

Dwayne Trott told the court that he prayed for death after the vicious attack by a group of men, which left him with scars to his body and legs and the remnants of a tracheotomy.

Antoine Herbert Anderson, 27, of St. Monica's Road, Pembroke, denies causing grievous bodily harm and intending to burn, maim, disfigure or cause grievous bodily harm to Mr. Trott on January 4, 2001.

Anderson was originally charged in relation to the crime with three other men - Jakai Tyrone Hartford, 22, of Mission Lane, Shaki Allen Jay Minors, 21, of Cherry Hill and John O'Donald Fox, 34, also of Mission Lane - but his three co-accused pleaded guilty to grievous bodily harm and actual bodily harm charges on Monday.

Giving evidence in Anderson's trial yesterday, Trott said he had been at a friend's house on the day he was attacked.

“These guys came to the door and started to beat me with a machete on the back of the head,” he said. “I tried to go to the bathroom. The rest of them came in and dragged me outside while they were hitting me.”

His friend Kofi Dill told the men to let him go but they would not yield.

“Once we were outside of the house they were chopping me in the back of the head and legs with the machete,” Mr. Trott said

A two-by-four piece of wood was also used to hit him.

“This lady was screaming,” he said. “She had a child and told them to stop. They were beating and chopping me all the way down to Government Gate. One of them said to take me off the street.”

Mr. Trott said the men dragged him past a wall with pit bull dogs behind it.

“One of them said to feed me to the dogs,” he told the court.

Some gardeners saw the beating and tried to stop the attackers but “those guys put up their weapons to them” and the gardeners backed off, he added.

One of the accused, Jakai Hartford, jumped on him and commented on what he perceived as Mr. Trott's pain.

“(He) jumped up in the air and his knee landed in my stomach with all of his weight,” Mr. Trott said. “It felt like my stomach popped. He said ‘It felt like I broke you on that one, I saw it in your eyes'.

“I couldn't breathe, I felt paralysed. That's when they dragged me down into this yard and they just kept beating me...

“They went on for hours. Then they dragged me down into a cellar. Then Anderson came in.”

Mr. Trott pointed out defendant Anderson in the court yesterday.

“(Anderson) tried to take over and was telling them what to do,” he said. “He told them to get duct tape and tie me up. He told them to get candles from upstairs. He was hitting me and brought out a trash bag. He started lighting the trash bags and was letting them drip all over my skin.

“He even put a trash bag on my leg and just lit it. As he was burning me, he was laughing and kicking me and all that.

“(Admitted attacker) Shaki Minors found a cigarette, lit it, slapped me in the face and burned my hand with the cigarette three times. John Fox was still beating me with wood until it couldn't break no more.”

Mr. Trott could barely speak as he offered testimony yesterday because he was crying.

But when he was able to continue, he said the beating stopped when Police cars arrived on the street above.

His ordeal was far from over, however.

“When the Police left they came back down and continued to burn and beat me up,” Mr. Trott said. “Anderson said he would get a battery and hook it up to me.”

Although the men never got the battery, “I could hear my skin sizzling,” he said.

“Anderson was still dropping the bags on me, I asked them to stop and he started kicking me.”

Mr. Trott said one of the men offered him $50 to take a taxi to the hospital, but Anderson put a stop to it.

“He said ‘don't worry',” Mr. Trott told the court. “If I died they would wrap me in a sheet and throw me in an old house.”

When Mr. Trott was pulled out of the cellar, he said it was dark.

“Around 30 people were just watching, the whole yard was full,” he told the court. “They put a dog on me out there and it was shaking me. I have a mark on my left foot.”

His hands and feet were bound with rope when his brother Andre Trott arrived at the scene.

“My brother said I was an embarrassment to him and I had his friend's bike and lots of things like that,” he told the court. “Then he said he would take me to rehab the following day.”

Eventually, “Jakai, Shaki, John and Antoine” left him in the cellar for the night, he said.

Mr. Trott said he prayed for God to relieve him.

“I prayed to the Lord and asked him to take my life,” he said. “I told him to just take me... but someone said ‘get up' and lifted me.”

He told the court he had to remove a lot of duct tape from his legs, and then managed to find a hole in the cellar door, just large enough for him to slip his hand through to unlock the door.

He said he stumbled upstairs, where he asked someone to to call an ambulance for him but instead they called a taxi.

“I ended up in hospital and that was it,” Mr. Trott said.

He told Crown prosecutor Anthony Blackman he had known Anderson for eight years before the torture took place and he had never “interfered” with him prior to the January 4, 2001 attack.

Trott was unable to look at the pictures that Det. Con. Steven Palmer took of his legs after the attack and started to cry again.

“I know it's tough,” Acting Justice Carlisle Greaves said. “But you have to steel yourself and tell us about the burning in the pictures.”

When he still could not look, Mr. Justice Greaves asked Trott to take off his shirt to show his scars.

The court saw scars on his stomach and arms where the doctors had to “take his insides out”. He also has a hole in this throat, where a tracheotomy had to be performed by doctors in order to help him breathe.

“My legs are all burned up,” he added. Mr. Trott spent three months in hospital after the attack.

Mr. Blackman said regardless of when Anderson joined in on the beating, he was “just as guilty and responsible as all who participated”.

Anderson's trial continues today.