Plumber jailed today for killing homeless man,17 years ago

High Court Judge Justice Hayden St Clair-Douglas sentenced 45-year-old Christopher Henry to five years and 10 months in prison for the 2001 killing of a homeless man.

Henry, a plumber of Vistabella, had pleaded guilty before St Clair-Douglas in the San Fernando Second Criminal Court charged with manslaughter.

On July 19, 2001, Henry was then a street vendor at Coffee Street in San Fernando. While selling haberdasheries, the vagrant, later identified as David Ian Duncan, asked Henry for money and cigarette. Henry gave him money and a lit cigarette. Duncan also called Saddest while walking away saw Henry’s wife and their young daughter walking in his direction. Duncan, a psychiatric outpatient, began cursing the mother and daughter. Duncan picked up a bottle and attempted to attack them.

Recalling defence attorney Subhas Panday’s previous submission, the judge said that Henry in a fit of rage picked up a piece of wood from the ground and hit the vagrant on his hands and feet. The wood had nails on it.

At the previous hearing, both Panday and State prosecutor Trevor Jones had asked the court to spare Henry a jail term. Duncan was known to have normally “attack and harass people all the time”, Panday had submitted.

In Passing his sentence today, the judge said he disagreed with the submissions for a non-custodial sentence as the victim died as a result being struck five times. It was not a single blow inflicted and the “fact of the case is a life was lost”.