DEREK ACHONG

Se­nior Re­porter

A man from Ari­ma has plead­ed guilty to killing an el­der­ly neigh­bour who re­sist­ed dur­ing a home in­va­sion in 2010.

Ke­ston Liv­er­pool was await­ing tri­al for mur­der and rob­bery with ag­gra­va­tion for well over a decade be­fore he was al­lowed to plead guilty to felony mur­der based on a plea agree­ment with the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) ne­go­ti­at­ed by his lawyer Michelle Gon­za­les, of the Pub­lic De­fend­ers’ De­part­ment (PDD).

Un­der the felony mur­der rule, the manda­to­ry death penal­ty is waived in cir­cum­stances where death oc­curs dur­ing the com­mis­sion of a less­er crim­i­nal of­fence, which in most cas­es is rob­bery.

The plea was ac­cept­ed by High Court Judge Hay­den St Clair-Dou­glas dur­ing a hear­ing yes­ter­day morn­ing. Liv­er­pool is ex­pect­ed to be sen­tenced on May 21.

Liv­er­pool was ac­cused of killing 70-year-old Al­borne “Abu” Roberts on De­cem­ber 2, 2010.

Roberts was asleep at home at Mal­abar Road, Ari­ma, with his com­mon-law wife and his grand­son, who lived with them, when they were awak­ened by two masked men, who broke in.

One of the men had a gun, while the oth­er had a knife and kitchen fork.

The duo threat­ened the fam­i­ly and de­mand­ed that they re­veal where they kept their cash and jew­ellery.

The men took their cell­phones, a lap­top, $300 which Roberts’ wife kept un­der her pil­low, her wed­ding band off her fin­ger and a small quan­ti­ty of jew­ellery.

While the duo con­tin­ued to ran­sack the house, Roberts re­port­ed­ly drew a cut­lass he kept un­der his bed and lunged at them.

Roberts was shot sev­er­al times be­fore the men ran away with their loot. Roberts died on the scene.

Liv­er­pool was even­tu­al­ly iden­ti­fied by Roberts’ grand­son, who claimed that he briefly recog­nised him af­ter the T-shirt cov­er­ing his face slipped while he was search­ing the house.

Roberts’ grand­son al­so claimed that he over­heard Liv­er­pool, who he knew by the alias Kwe­si, speak­ing with his ac­com­plice and recog­nised his voice as he had seen him in the com­mu­ni­ty twice a week for sev­en to eight years.

Af­ter Liv­er­pool was ar­rest­ed and pos­i­tive­ly iden­ti­fied, he was tak­en to his fam­i­ly home in the com­mu­ni­ty where in­ves­ti­ga­tors found some of the stolen jew­ellery in his bed­room.

Dur­ing the search, Liv­er­pool re­port­ed­ly at­tempt­ed to es­cape by run­ning through the back door but was prompt­ly ap­pre­hend­ed. His ac­com­plice was nev­er ar­rest­ed.

Liv­er­pool was al­so rep­re­sent­ed by Ayan­na Norville-Mod­este.