Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

A 40-year-old St Au­gus­tine man has been sen­tenced to 16 years and nine months in prison af­ter ad­mit­ting to his role in the 2017 killing of a Tacarigua busi­ness­man dur­ing a botched rob­bery.

Alex “Red­man” Jobe plead­ed guilty to felony mur­der and was sen­tenced by High Court Judge Lisa Ram­sumair-Hinds last week.

Jobe was charged in con­nec­tion with the death of 49-year-old Ri­car­do Calvin Fran­cis dur­ing an in­ci­dent at Fran­cis’ mi­ni mart at the cor­ner of Crown and Back Streets, Tacarigua, on May 27, 2017.

Ac­cord­ing to the pros­e­cu­tion, Jobe and an­oth­er man en­tered the busi­ness, where Jobe, armed with a firearm, ap­proached Fran­cis from be­hind and an­nounced the rob­bery.

Jobe’s ac­com­plice then or­dered Fran­cis and sev­er­al cus­tomers in­to a store­room.

When the ac­com­plice briefly left the room, Fran­cis re­port­ed­ly at­tacked Jobe with the as­sis­tance of two cus­tomers. Dur­ing the strug­gle, Fran­cis wrest­ed the firearm from Jobe and struck him in the face and head with it, re­port­ed­ly say­ing he be­lieved the weapon was un­loaded.

The ac­com­plice re­turned, seized the firearm from Fran­cis and shot him in the face be­fore flee­ing with Jobe.

Fran­cis was tak­en to the Ari­ma Health Fa­cil­i­ty, where he was pro­nounced dead on ar­rival.

Jobe was ar­rest­ed sev­er­al months lat­er af­ter two cus­tomers iden­ti­fied him as one of the per­pe­tra­tors. He was charged with mur­der as well as pos­ses­sion of a firearm and am­mu­ni­tion.

His al­leged ac­com­plice was ar­rest­ed and charged in 2020. That case is still pend­ing be­fore the courts.

While await­ing tri­al, Jobe en­tered in­to a plea agree­ment with the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP), un­der which he was al­lowed to plead guilty to the less­er of­fence of felony mur­der.

Un­der the felony mur­der rule, the manda­to­ry death penal­ty for mur­der does not ap­ply where a death oc­curs dur­ing the com­mis­sion of an­oth­er se­ri­ous of­fence, such as rob­bery.

In de­ter­min­ing the sen­tence, Jus­tice Ram­sumair-Hinds adopt­ed a start­ing point of 28 years for the felony mur­der con­vic­tion and 15 years for the firearm and am­mu­ni­tion of­fences.

The judge con­sid­ered a vic­tim im­pact state­ment from Fran­cis’ wid­ow, Par­batie Fran­cis, who de­scribed the emo­tion­al and fi­nan­cial hard­ship she and the cou­ple’s two chil­dren, then aged 15 and nine, en­dured fol­low­ing his death.

The judge de­clined to re­duce Jobe’s sen­tence based on his per­son­al cir­cum­stances, de­spite not­ing that he had left school at age 13 to help sup­port his fam­i­ly and had par­tic­i­pat­ed in sev­er­al re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion pro­grammes while on re­mand.

Al­though courts typ­i­cal­ly grant a one-third dis­count for an ear­ly guilty plea, the judge ex­er­cised her dis­cre­tion to ap­ply a two-fifths (40 per cent) re­duc­tion af­ter find­ing that Jobe had at­tempt­ed to plead guilty at the ear­li­est avail­able op­por­tu­ni­ty.

Af­ter cred­it­ing him for time al­ready spent on re­mand, Jobe was left with nine years and three months to serve for felony mur­der and one year and five months for the firearm and am­mu­ni­tion of­fences. The sen­tences are to run con­cur­rent­ly.

Jobe was rep­re­sent­ed by at­tor­neys Car­los Wal­dron and Shelly-Ann Craw­ford. The pros­e­cu­tion was led by Char­maine Samuel and Gilliana Guy.