A praise and worship at a church service allegedly turned into an unholy shoving match between church leaders while two women assaulted each other with a shoe and a tambourine.
Sgt Elke-mia Campbell told a court yesterday that she was standing at the back of the Ebenezer Mission Baptist Church observing persons on the pulpit singing when a member seated near her got up, ran to the lightswitch and turned off the lights.
A church officer followed after him and flipped the lights back on, she said.
As the two members were fiddling with the light switch, said Sgt Campbell, she saw 31-year-old Bishop Michael Symonette walk towards the pulpit and move the Lord’s Supper table to the side wall of the church.
She told the magistrates’ court Symonette then tried to remove the altar which is when she saw shoving between Symonette and 53-year-old church board member Zendel Stubbs.
Campbell said she ran to the front of the church to the argument and saw Symonette’s sister, Sharine Symonette, trying to get involved only to be pulled back by 46-year-old church minister Levano Moss’s mother who was shortly afterwards hit with a shoe by the sister before the mother hit her with a tambourine.
Minister Moss went after the woman who attacked his elderly mother and Bishop Symonette, according to officer Campbell, was right on his heels.
Bishop Symonette, Ministers Moss and Stubbs, were in court yesterday on trial as Sgt Campbell recalled what she had seen minutes after she was called to the church on Sunday, September 23.
The three men of the cloth, who are on $1,000 self-signed bail, each face a charge of disorderly behaviour in a place of divine worship.
All three have denied the accusation and pleaded not guilty at their arraignment.
By LAMECH JOHNSON
Tribune Staff Reporter
