Woman who set sleeping spouse on fire gets life sentence

Serita Housen Blair, the woman who doused her spouse with gas and set him on fire resulting in his death, will have to serve at least 18 years in prison for her crime.

Housen Blair was given the mandatory sentence of life in prison and ordered to serve 18 years before she is eligible for parole.

The punishment is in line with a plea agreement her lawyers struck with prosecutors.

The sentence was imposed by Justice Vaughn Smith in the Home Circuit Court in downtown Kingston on Friday.

Housen Blair pleaded guilty to murder on February 9 for the gruesome death of her common-law partner Kenton Brown on May 27, 2017. 

Dressed in a black blouse and skirt, she sobbed in the prisoner's box as her attorney pleaded with Smith for leniency and mercy.

Among the evidence prosecutors Andrea Martin Swaby and Shanique Farquharson had lined up for Housen Blair's murder trial were transcripts of a deathbed interview Brown gave a police constable in which he detailed the late-night attack.

“Me ongle wake up fi find miself inna fire wid di woman stand up over me,” he recounted to the constable hours after the May 23, 2017, attack inside the couple's St Andrew home.

The interview was cut short after Brown – father of two children aged seven and 10 years old at the time – began “shaking violently”, the constable recounted.

“Officer, take care a mi two pickney because dem nuh have nobody,” said the cop, recounting Brown's last words to him.

Brown succumbed to his injuries four days later.

- Livern Barrett

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