One more sent to hang

Barbara Gayle, Staff Reporter

One of four men convicted of the abduction, rape and shooting death of two women in 2005 has been given the death penalty.

Desmond Kennedy and Alton Heath, both in their 20s, along with Sheldon Duncan, 32, all of Greenwich Town, Kingston 12, and André Reid were found guilty on March 10 of the murders.

Reid, 23, also called Chadwick Gordon, of Slipe Road, Kingston, has been sentenced to hang, while the other three men have been given life imprisonment.

Reid was described as the mastermind, as he was the one who was armed.

Senior Puisne Judge Gloria Smith, in handing down sentence in the Home Circuit Court last Friday, said the other three men should not receive parole until they had served 35 years. Justice Smith described the men as callous. She said the acts committed were inhumane and heartless.

Attorney-at-law Kathy Pyke and Crown Counsel Kelly-Ann Boyne led evidence at the three-week trial that in October 2005, the men abducted three women from a bar at Newport West, Kingston 12, and took them to a football field in Greenwich Town Farm.

Some men who were at the playing field raped the women before they were shot and thrown into a sewerage pit. Two of the women died in the pit, while the other managed to get out and report the incident to the police.

Police investigations, headed by Deputy Superintendent Michael Phipps, led to the arrests of the men. The woman, who survived the ordeal, was the main witness for the prosecution at the in-camera trial.

It was reported that the women were shot in reprisal for a double murder on McKenley Crescent, Kingston 11, which had occurred some weeks before the incident.

The men denied being involved in the incident but the jury deliberated and convicted them.

The prosecution had asked for the death penalty to be imposed on the men, but defence lawyers C.J. Mitchell, Michael Lorne, Valerie Neita Robertson and Seymour Stewart opposed the application.

They argued that no physical evidence had been used to link the men to the double murder.

No one has been hanged in the justice system since 1988.