A man who was accused of strangling his girlfriend and setting the house ablaze has been freed of the murder charge.

Ezra McNeish, 43, tanker driver of Portmore, St Catherine, was charged with the murder of Carol Walters of Portsmouth, St Catherine.

He was freed after Resident Magistrate Marcia Dunbar Greene upheld a no-case submission by defence lawyers Peter Champagnie and Romona Nelson.

The lawyers submitted at the end of a preliminary inquiry in the Spanish Town Resident Magistrate's Court that the prosecution did not establish any link between McNeish and the murder.

The allegations were that on March 10, 2009, Walters was strangled at her home and the room set ablaze.

There was no eyewitness to the murder. A deponent said that hours before the house was engulfed in flames, McNeish was seen leaving the premises. The Crown did not produce any medical evidence to prove that the woman was strangled.