[August 10, 2011] 2 men found guilty of murder Tweet ST. CROIX, Aug 09, 2011 (The Virgin Islands Daily News - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- A jury deliberated about two hours Monday morning before finding Kalif Flanders and Gillian Harper guilty of beating and killing a man behind Evelyn Williams Elementary School last year. Harper, 33, and Flanders, 23, face mandatory life sentences for their roles in the slaying of 22-year-old Luis Orlando Encarnacion on the morning of May 13, 2010, as children were gathering for the school day. The jury returned guilty verdicts for both men on first-degree murder, assault and weapons charges, including possession of a firearm in a school zone and possession of a firearm during a violent crime. On each count, both defendants were charged with aiding and abetting each other in committing the crime. The charges were a mix of federal and local charges, and the case was tried in District Court. Attorneys declined comment on the verdict Monday. Prosecutors contend that Flanders came to Encarnacion's house in Mount Pleasant the morning of the murder and walked Encarnacion to the field behind the school. It was in that field, prosecutors argued, that Flanders and Harper beat Encarnacion with a sharp object -- within site of children in the school yard -- before dragging him into the bush and putting a bullet into his brain. Evidence presented during the trial included testimony from schoolchildren, who provided eyewitness accounts of two men beating another man in the field behind the school that morning. They reported that the two men doing the beating took the third man into the bush just before they heard a gunshot ring out. Other testifiers included Encarnacion's mother, who identified Flanders as the man Encarnacion left with that morning, and a woman living close to the back of the school, who told jurors that Harper and Flanders asked her for a ride to Paradise Mills that morning. The woman told jurors that she spotted a gun in Harper's back pocket when the two men got out of her car. Prosecutors suggested to the jury that Flanders and Harper needed the ride home to Paradise Mills, which also is near the crime scene, because they needed to avoid being seen walking in the area after they killed Encarnacion. A significant portion of testimony in the trial was devoted to a cell phone that police found in the field where the beating occurred, near a pair of broken glasses that Encarnacion was wearing that morning. Prosecutors contend the cell phone belonged to Flanders and was inadvertently left behind at the scene. Testimony indicated that Flanders told police in a statement the day after the murder that he lost the phone on May 11 -- two days before the crime. In closing arguments, which lasted all day on Friday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Alphonso Andrews laid out a time line of incoming and outgoing calls to the phone between 7 a.m. and 8 a.m. the day of the murder, contending that the calls showed that Flanders and Harper were talking in the minutes leading up to the crime. Testimony also indicated that the victim made a call from the phone at 7:26 a.m. that day to his cousin. The cousin testified that Encarnacion sounded "in a rush, stuttering, scared," and that there were loud voices in the background. The conversation, he testified, lasted only seconds before the call was disconnected. The cousin tried to call the number back, but there was no answer, he said. Prosecutors suggested to the jury that Encarnacion had used Flanders' phone to make the call and that no one answered the phone when Encarnacion's cousin tried to call back because the attack on Encarnacion already was under way. Andrews also suggested that when calls to the phone began again, after a six-minute period with no calls, Flanders had made it home after the crime, noticed his phone was missing, and was using his girlfriend's phone in a frantic attempt to locate his own. During their closing arguments, defense attorneys suggested that police ignored relevant evidence and pushed the investigation to a pre-conceived conclusion. They argued that there were holes in the case that jurors could not ignore, raising questions about the police investigation and about the motives and truthfulness of witnesses. No sentencing date has been set. - Contact Joy Blackburn at 774-8772 ext. 455 or e-mail [email protected]. To see more of The Virgin Islands Daily News, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.virginislandsdailynews.com/. Copyright (c) 2011, The Virgin Islands Daily News, St. Thomas Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For more information about the content services offered by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services (MCT), visit www.mctinfoservices.com. [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]