A man from Mara­cas/St Joseph, has been sen­tenced to 12 years in prison af­ter plead­ing guilty to stab­bing a neigh­bour to death. The neigh­bour had at­tacked the man’s wife and sons while in­tox­i­cat­ed.

Ken­rick Williams had been await­ing tri­al for mur­der for al­most a decade be­fore his lawyers, Ayan­na Norville-Mod­este and Tyler-Marie Lee King of the Pub­lic De­fend­ers’ De­part­ment (PDD), ne­go­ti­at­ed a plea agree­ment with the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions in Sep­tem­ber last year.

Un­der the agree­ment, Williams was al­lowed to plead guilty to the less­er of­fence of manslaugh­ter by provo­ca­tion.

High Court Judge De­van Ram­per­sad ap­proved the plea deal last year but sen­tenced Williams on Mon­day. Williams was ac­cused of un­law­ful­ly killing 21-year-old Aaron Ram­sa­roop on April 10, 2016.

Ac­cord­ing to the ev­i­dence, Ram­sa­roop was lim­ing with Williams’ wife, Berna­dine Joseph, and his sis­ter at their Acono Road home while Williams was at work. The trio con­sumed three bot­tles of rum dur­ing the day.

Around 6 pm, Ram­sa­roop at­tacked Williams’ son and ac­cused him of pre­vi­ous­ly throw­ing stones at him. Williams’ oth­er son and Joseph tried to in­ter­vene, but Ram­sa­roop at­tacked them too.

Williams ar­rived home and wit­nessed the al­ter­ca­tion. He be­gan fight­ing with Ram­sa­roop, who was stabbed sev­er­al times dur­ing the scuf­fle.

Ram­sa­roop was tak­en to the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex in Mt Hope, where he died while re­ceiv­ing treat­ment.

Dur­ing po­lice ques­tion­ing, Williams claimed Ram­sa­roop had a knife when he at­tacked him and his rel­a­tives. Williams said he dis­armed Ram­sa­roop and used the knife to stab him.

“Yeah ah done tell al­lyuh ah stab up de man in meh house, ah de­fend my­self, chil­dren, and wife in me house,” Williams re­port­ed­ly said.

In de­ter­min­ing the ap­pro­pri­ate sen­tence, Jus­tice Ram­per­sad set a start­ing point of 21 years. He re­duced the sen­tence by three years, cit­ing Williams’ clean crim­i­nal record, re­morse and co­op­er­a­tion with po­lice.

Jus­tice Ram­per­sad al­so con­sid­ered that Williams had no in­frac­tions while on re­mand and had par­tic­i­pat­ed in anger man­age­ment pro­grammes. He then ap­plied a one-third dis­count for Williams’ guilty plea. Af­ter cred­it for the time Williams had spent in prison be­fore sen­tenc­ing, he had one year, six months and 13 days left to serve.

The Of­fice of the DPP was rep­re­sent­ed by Kern Young.