KINGSTON, Jamaica– A High Court judge Friday sentenced a teenage boy to life in prison after he was convicted of raping, buggering, and strangling to death a nine-year-old girl in 2018.
Justice Courtney Daye, who described the offenses as “horrific,” also ruled that the teenager, who was 13 years old at the time of the murder, would be eligible for parole after 23 years and nine months. He was also sentenced to 18 years in prison for the rape and ten years for the buggery.
The judge said that the young man, who was found guilty on July 1 this year, allowed himself to be “overcome by this abnormal sexual passion towards a young child” and that he went higher than the 20 years suggested by the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), Paula Llewellyn, KC, because of the “gravity” of the offenses, the age of the victim and the fact that the defendant showed no remorse.
The High Court heard that the nine-year-old girl was killed after she had accepted the young man’s invitation to pick apples as they walked home from school on June 5, 2018. Her body was found near a guava tree.
A post-mortem report presented to the Court last week showed that she had died of asphyxia caused by manual strangulation. She also had lacerations of the vagina and anus.
But the teenager maintained his innocence, even after his conviction, telling a probation officer that the girl was killed by one of two men who surprised them in the bushes. He said the man raped the child and then compelled him at gunpoint to have sex with her before one of the men placed his hands around her neck until her feet stopped moving.
Llewellyn said this claim was “emphatically” rejected by jurors in the face of overwhelming scientific and other evidence tying the teenager to the crime.
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