A man from Mal­oney has been sen­tenced to hang for mur­der­ing his ex-girl­friend al­most 14 years ago.

Shel­don “Worm” Gumbs re­ceived the manda­to­ry death penal­ty af­ter be­ing con­vict­ed at the end of his judge-alone tri­al be­fore Jus­tice Lisa Ram­sumair-Hinds at the Hall of Jus­tice in Port-of-Spain, last Thurs­day.

Gumbs is ac­cused of killing his 26-year-old for­mer girl­friend Krys­tal Richards on May 29, 2010.

Richards was in her apart­ment in Mal­oney Gar­dens, Arou­ca, when a gun­man shot her through her kitchen win­dow.

The wit­ness­es in Gumbs’ tri­al in­clud­ed Richards’ younger sis­ter, who was 12 years old at the time of the shoot­ing, and Richard’s daugh­ter, who was in the apart­ment with her moth­er.

Both con­firmed that they knew Gumbs as Richards’ com­pan­ion, but her sis­ter could not re­mem­ber if she saw him on the day of her mur­der.

Richards’ daugh­ter claimed that she was watch­ing tele­vi­sion when she heard her moth­er speak­ing to some­one at the front door.

She claimed that short­ly af­ter she heard a vol­ley of gun­shots and then found her in­jured moth­er.

How­ev­er, she ad­mit­ted that she did not see who her moth­er was speak­ing to or who shot her.

One of the main wit­ness­es was Gumbs’ neigh­bour who he al­leged­ly con­fessed to.

How­ev­er, when he took the wit­ness stand in the tri­al, the neigh­bour claimed that he was pres­sured by homi­cide de­tec­tives in­to sign­ing a state­ment im­pli­cat­ing Gumbs.

Jus­tice Ram­sumair-Hinds re­lied on the state­ment in de­cid­ing the ver­dict as she said she be­lieved the po­lice of­fi­cer, who al­leged­ly took the state­ment and claimed that the neigh­bour gave it will­ing­ly.

Gumbs was rep­re­sent­ed by Michelle Ali, of the Pub­lic De­fend­ers’ De­part­ment, while Char­maine Samuel and Gilliana Guy rep­re­sent­ed the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions.