DEREK ACHONG

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

A teenag­er, who ad­mit­ted to killing a home­less man af­ter he (the man) at­tacked him and his friend al­most five years ago, is set to be re­leased in a few months.

The teen, who can­not be iden­ti­fied as he was 14 years old at the time of the killing in 2020, was placed on pro­ba­tion af­ter he plead­ed guilty to manslaugh­ter be­fore Jus­tice Jade Ro­driguez in the Chil­dren’s Court.

The pro­ba­tion is on­ly ex­pect­ed to take ef­fect af­ter the teen com­pletes Caribbean Sec­ondary Ed­u­ca­tion Cer­tifi­cate (CSEC) ex­am­i­na­tions in June.

Un­til then, he would con­tin­ue to re­main at the Youth Train­ing and Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Cen­tre (YTRC) in Arou­ca.

The teenag­er was ini­tial­ly ac­cused of mur­der­ing 44-year-old Di­al Seep­er­sad in Ju­ly 2020.

He was rid­ing his bi­cy­cle in St Au­gus­tine when Seep­er­sad cursed and threat­ened to kill him.

The teen spat at Seep­er­sad, who raised his hand to hit him.

The teen ducked to avoid the blow and drew a knife he kept in his back pock­et.

He threw a stab in the di­rec­tion of Seep­er­sad’s hand but he missed and stabbed Seep­er­sad in his chest.

The teen then rode away as Seep­er­sad col­lapsed and died on the scene.

Sev­er­al hours lat­er, the teenag­er sur­ren­dered to the po­lice with his moth­er.

While he was ini­tial­ly charged with mur­der, the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) even­tu­al­ly filed an in­dict­ment against him for the less­er of­fence of manslaugh­ter.

In May, last year, the teen, through his lawyer Amit Ma­habir, sought a max­i­mum sen­tence in­di­ca­tion (MSI), un­der which he was in­formed of the max­i­mum penal­ty he faced if he plead­ed guilty and avoid­ed a tri­al.

In de­cid­ing on the ap­pro­pri­ate sen­tence for the teen, Jus­tice Ro­driguez be­gan with a start­ing point of 11 years.

Her de­ci­sion was par­tial­ly based on the teen not plan­ning to kill Seep­er­sad.

“The facts do not sug­gest that the child pre­med­i­tat­ed the act but rather act­ed in the spur of the mo­ment, in re­sponse to un­fold­ing events,” she said.

Point­ing to the fact that Seep­er­sad was stabbed once, Jus­tice Ro­driguez said: “It is clear that the child did not in­tend to cause as se­vere harm to the de­ceased as he did.”

Jus­tice Ro­driguez then re­duced the sen­tence by two and a half years based on the teen show­ing re­morse by apol­o­gis­ing to Seep­er­sad’s rel­a­tives.

She al­so men­tioned that the teen par­tic­i­pat­ed in sev­er­al pro­grammes while on re­mand, in­clud­ing en­rolling in CSEC class­es.

Af­ter ap­ply­ing a one-third dis­count for his guilty plea and de­duct­ing the time he spent on re­mand, the teenag­er had 11 months left to serve.

In de­cid­ing to place him on pro­ba­tion, Jus­tice Ro­driguez ruled that there was no use­ful pur­pose in hav­ing him serve the re­main­der of the sen­tence.

“He has shown signs of sig­nif­i­cant im­prove­ment in his be­hav­iour and ed­u­ca­tion,” she said.

“Giv­en all of these facts and the aims and ob­jec­tives of sen­tenc­ing at the Chil­dren’s Court, which is the treat­ment and re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion of young of­fend­ers, this Court is of the opin­ion that the child has been suc­cess­ful­ly re­ha­bil­i­tat­ed and no ad­di­tion­al ben­e­fits will re­sult from his ex­tend­ed stay in cus­tody,” she added.

Jus­tice Ro­driguez al­so agreed to ex­er­cise her dis­cre­tion to not record a con­vic­tion against him pro­vid­ed he com­plies with the terms of his pro­ba­tion.

In the event that he breach­es the terms of his pro­ba­tion, he would al­so be re-sen­tenced for the crime.

The judge al­so or­dered that his sen­tence be mon­i­tored every three months.

The DPP’s Of­fice was rep­re­sent­ed by Danielle Thomp­son.