MONTREAL -- A violent criminal behind a long string of home invasions in Montreal and Laval that left one man dead and two injured has been found guilty on 54 charges.
On Friday, a judge found Septimus Neverson, 57, guilty of charges including murder, attempted murder, kidnapping and robbery.
Neverson was a suspect in 13 home invasions that took place between 2006 and 2009. One man was fatally shot in his own home during a robbery and two more were injured by gunfire. In one case in Cote-des-Neiges, Neverson used a ten-year-old child as a human shield to escape police surrounding the home.
Neverson then fled to his native Trinidad and Tobago, but was extradited to Canada in 2016, a year after Montreal police had issued an international warrant for his arrest.
The trial lasted one-and-a-half years.
Determining Neverson was the suspect in the invasions was no easy task, explained Crown prosecutor Catherine Perreault.
"In this case, as is often the case in home invasions, it was difficult for the Crown to establish the identity of the person who actually intruded in the house, because the intruder was masked most of the time, if not all of the time," she said. "So the Crown has to rely both on similar-fact evidence but also a web of circumstantial evidence that established that Mr. Neverson was indeed the person who committed all those home invasions at the time."
While the circumstantial evidence was not enough to convict him, Neverson bragged about his crimes to two friends who agreed to speak to police and testify in court.
The judge found their testimony credible, leading to his conviction.
