Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

A 28-year-old man from Ari­ma, who as­sist­ed an old­er rel­a­tive in ab­duct­ing a Bras­so Seco fam­i­ly and mur­der­ing three mem­bers, in­clud­ing a ba­by, in 2014, has been sen­tenced to 12 years in prison.

Joshua Janet re­ceived the sen­tence yes­ter­day af­ter plead­ing guilty to 21 se­ri­ous crim­i­nal of­fences, in­clud­ing three mur­der charges, be­fore High Court Judge Nali­ni Singh.

How­ev­er, he is ex­pect­ed to be re­leased in a lit­tle over a year, as the ten years and eight months he spent on re­mand await­ing tri­al were de­duct­ed from his sen­tence.

Ir­ma Ram­per­sad, 49; her daugh­ters Janelle and Fe­li­cia; Janelle’s ba­by Sha­nia Amoroso; and their 52-year-old next-door neigh­bour Fe­lix Mar­tinez went miss­ing on Oc­to­ber 26, 2014.

Teams of po­lice of­fi­cers and sol­diers con­duct­ed dai­ly search­es for the group be­fore Mar­tinez’s body was found in a forest­ed area near their homes on No­vem­ber 8.

Three days lat­er, the de­com­pos­ing bod­ies of Ram­per­sad and her grand­daugh­ter were dis­cov­ered stuffed in a duf­fel bag, dumped just a short dis­tance from where Mar­tinez was found.

A week lat­er, as po­lice were ex­pect­ing to stum­ble on the teenage sis­ters’ bod­ies, the sis­ters were found re­strained in a makeshift camp built in the forest­ed area.

Hours lat­er, Janet, who was 17 at the time, sur­ren­dered to the po­lice.

Days lat­er, Janet’s rel­a­tive, Az­mon Alexan­der, who re­port­ed­ly evad­ed po­lice by dis­guis­ing him­self as a woman, was ar­rest­ed near his moth­er’s home in Mal­abar, Ari­ma.

Alexan­der was slapped with 64 charges aris­ing out of the group’s ab­duc­tion and the de­ceased mem­bers’ mur­ders, while Janet faced 21 charges.

Janet and Alexan­der were await­ing tri­al for their al­leged crimes when Janet, through his lawyers Nicholas Ram­per­sads­ingh and Ayan­na Norville-Mod­este of the Pub­lic De­fend­ers’ De­part­ment, re­quest­ed a max­i­mum sen­tence in­di­ca­tion (MSI).

Alexan­der, who is rep­re­sent­ed by at­tor­ney Fa­reed Ali, is still await­ing tri­al.

The MSI was per­formed by Jus­tice Singh for Janet, as the manda­to­ry death penal­ty for mur­der did not ap­ply to him, as he was a mi­nor when the al­leged crimes oc­curred.

In de­cid­ing the ap­pro­pri­ate sen­tences for the of­fences, Jus­tice Singh be­gan with a start­ing point of 20 years. She then in­creased the sen­tence by five years based on the fact that the vic­tims suf­fered pro­longed tor­ture.

Jus­tice Singh then ap­plied dis­counts based on Janet show­ing re­morse and his hav­ing a clean crim­i­nal record be­fore be­ing im­pli­cat­ed for the crimes as a teenag­er.

She al­so con­sid­ered his suc­cess­ful par­tic­i­pa­tion in nu­mer­ous re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion pro­grammes while on re­mand.

Af­ter giv­ing a one-third dis­count for his guilty pleas, Janet was left with a sen­tence of 12 years.

The case was pros­e­cut­ed by Shanelle Kissoon.