PROVIDENCE, Rhode Island (23 Feb 2006) -- A Superior Court jury this afternoon began deliberating a wrongful-death lawsuit against a Jamestown man accused by his in-laws of killing his wife during a diving trip in the Caribbean. After hearing closing arguments from the plaintiff's attorney and defendant David Swain, who is acting as his own attorney, the jury began its discussions at 3:13 p.m. and concluded at 4 p.m. The jurors are scheduled to resume at 9:30 a.m. tomorrow. Swain's wife, Shelley Tyre, 46, died in March 1999 during a diving trip off the Caribbean island of Tortola. Tortola authorities ruled the death an accident "unless proven otherwise," and Swain has never been charged with a crime. In his closing argument, J. Renn Olenn, the lawyer representing Tyre's parents, claimed that Swain had gotten away with murder on Tortola, and he urged the jurors not to let him get away from them. He claimed that evidence he presented at trial, including testimony from the chief medical examiner for Florida's Miami-Dade County, proved that Swain went into the water with his wife and attacked her from behind, then surfaced quickly because he had run out of air from the struggle. | | PADI 5-Star IDC Ocean State Scuba owner David Swain got away with murder while scuba diving in the British Virgin Islands says plantiff's attorney. Swain, a former member of the Jamestown Town Council and owner of a scuba-diving business, reminded the jurors that he had never been charged with a crime. He also asked why the chief medical examiner in Miami hadn't contacted authorities in Tortola if the medical examiner was so convinced that he had killed his wife. Swain said the death of "the wife I so loved" was a loss for all. SOURCE - The Providence Journal |
