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Friday, July 18, 2025

San Fernando man sentenced to 27 years for role in taxi driver’s murder

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1169 days ago
20220505

A man from San Fer­nan­do has been sen­tenced to 27 years in prison for his role in mur­der­ing a taxi dri­ver dur­ing a botched car­jack­ing in 2006. 

Avinash Pooran was al­lowed to plead guilty to felony mur­der in March but was on­ly sen­tenced by High Court Judge Nor­ton Jack yes­ter­day. 

Un­der the felony mur­der rule, the manda­to­ry death penal­ty for mur­der can be waived in cir­cum­stances where death re­sults dur­ing the com­mis­sion of a less­er crim­i­nal of­fence such as rob­bery.

In de­cid­ing on the ap­pro­pri­ate sen­tence for Pooran, Jus­tice Jack not­ed that he was pre­clud­ed from ap­ply­ing the death penal­ty un­der the Chil­dren’s Act, as Pooran was 17 years when he com­mit­ted the crime.

Jus­tice Jack ac­cept­ed sub­mis­sions from Pooran’s le­gal team that he be sen­tenced to a fixed prison term in­stead of the at the court’s plea­sure, with a min­i­mum term and pe­ri­od­ic sen­tence re­views, as is done with ju­ve­nile of­fend­ers ac­cused of mur­der. 

He be­gan with a start­ing point of 30 years in prison, as he not­ed that the crime was un­pro­voked and pre­med­i­tat­ed. 

“A life was snuffed out be­cause of car parts,” he said, as he not­ed that there was noth­ing to sug­gest that he could not grasp that he was par­tic­i­pat­ing in a vi­cious and hor­rif­ic act based on his age. 

Jus­tice Jack de­cid­ed to re­duce the start­ing point by three years, as he point­ed out that Pooran had a clean crim­i­nal record be­fore be­ing charged, showed re­morse, co­op­er­at­ed with po­lice and had no dis­ci­pli­nary in­frac­tions whilst on re­mand. 

He re­ject­ed sub­mis­sions from pros­e­cu­tors that Pooran should on­ly re­ceive a 20 per cent dis­count on his sen­tence for his guilty plea, as op­posed to the one-third usu­al­ly award­ed be­cause Pooran went on tri­al and was con­vict­ed be­fore win­ning an ap­peal over his con­vic­tion and earn­ing a re­tri­al. 

Jus­tice Jack ruled that Pooran could not be pe­nalised for pre­vi­ous­ly tak­ing the case to tri­al and test­ing the pros­e­cu­tion’s ev­i­dence.

As part of the sen­tenc­ing, Jus­tice Jack al­so de­duct­ed the 15 years Pooran spent on re­mand be­fore the de­ter­mi­na­tion of the case, mean­ing that he would serve two years and eight months in prison be­fore be­ing re­leased.  

Pooran was joint­ly charged with Win­ston “Mon­ty” Al­leyne for mur­der­ing Adi­ka Nicholas, of Dun­can Vil­lage, San Fer­nan­do, on De­cem­ber 6, 2006. 

Al­leyne al­so plead­ed guilty to felony mur­der and was pre­vi­ous­ly sen­tenced to 28 years in prison by Jus­tice Jack. 

Ac­cord­ing to the ev­i­dence in the case, Nicholas was ply­ing his car for hire at Li­brary Cor­ner in San Fer­nan­do when Al­leyne, Pooran and an­oth­er man en­tered and asked to be tak­en to Rousil­lac. 

The fol­low­ing day, his body was dis­cov­ered in a drain at Rousil­lac Ex­ten­sion Road. A post mortem re­vealed that he had been stabbed 54 times and his throat was slit. 

When Al­leyne was ar­rest­ed sev­er­al weeks lat­er, he con­fessed to his in­volve­ment in Nicholas’ mur­der. 

He claimed that he and two friends, one from which he was rent­ing an apart­ment, made a plan to steal a ve­hi­cle and sell its parts in or­der to help with their fi­nan­cial dif­fi­cul­ties. 

Al­leyne agreed that his pay­ment for his in­volve­ment would have been not hav­ing to pay rent for that month. 

He claimed that they board­ed Nicholas’ taxi and while they were on their way to Rousil­lac, he asked Nicholas to stop the ve­hi­cle for him to uri­nate on the side of the road. He claimed that while he was out of the ve­hi­cle, his friends at­tacked Nicholas and at­tempt­ed to re­strain him.

He ad­mit­ted that he re­turned to the ve­hi­cle and held Nicholas’ feet as his two friends stabbed him sev­er­al times. They then threw Nicholas out of the car and in­to the drain. 

The men lat­er got rid of their blood-stained cloth­ing and took the car to an aban­doned sug­ar cane field, where they re­moved the bon­net, trunk, lights and oth­er parts be­fore aban­don­ing it. 

Pooran was rep­re­sent­ed by Pe­ter Carter and Chimere Gib­son-Wa­di, while Nor­ma Pe­ters rep­re­sent­ed the State. (DA)

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