'Monty' pleads guilty to role in taxi driver's 2006 murder

A SAN FERNANDO man will serve out four years and ten months of his 28-year prison sentence after he pleaded guilty to his role in the killing of a taxi driver in 2006.

Winston “Monty” Alleyne was sentenced by Justice Norton Jack, while one of his accomplices is expected to be sentenced on another occasion, as there were issues relating to the facts of the case presented by the prosecution.

Alleyne pleaded guilty to the murder of Adika Nicholas on December 9, 2006.

His plea was based on the felony murder construct. Felony murder is categorised as a violent arrestable offence and applies when an offender commits a certain kind of felony and someone is killed in the course of it. It does not carry the automatic death sentence reserved for murder convictions.

It was the prosecution’s case that Alleyne and two accomplices got into Nicholas’s taxi at Library Corner, San Fernando while Nicholas was waiting for passengers. When they later killed him, Alleyne's role was to hold Nicholas’s feet while the others stabbed the taxi driver.

Jack held an appropriate starting point for his sentence was 28 years. Alleyne received his one-third discount for his guilty plea and the 15 years he has spent in prison awaiting trial was also deducted, leaving four years and ten months left to serve.

Nicholas lived at 13 Papourie Road, Duncan Village, San Fernando and was the owner of a dark grey Nissan B13w which he worked as a taxi.

When police arrested Alleyne three days later, he told them he and the two others were at a house in Duncan Village,where they discussed their financial problems and “planned to get some cars” to help one of the men pay his mortgage and bills.

Alleyne said he agreed to take part in orde to pay his rent for December and they went to San Fernando, where they parked their car on Cipero Street and took a taxi to the Marabella taxi stand at Library Corner.

One of the men hired Nicholas to take him to his mother’s home in Rousillac.

On the way, Alleyne told Nicholas he wanted to urinate and the driver told him to hold on, as the man who hired him said they were near their destination.

When the car stopped, Alleyne got out to relieve himself and told police when he returned, “Everything started.”

He said they pulled Nicholas from the front of the car to the back and struggled with him. Alleyne held Nicholas’s feet while the other men stabbed him.

They then threw Nicholas out of the car and left him, driving his car to their home, where the other men changed their blood-stained clothing.

The next day, Alleyne took Nicholas’s car to a cane field, where they scrapped it. They took off the bonnet, trunk, lights and some other items and left the shell in the cane field. The car was found burnt and abandoned in Borde Narve.

That same day, at about 5.45 am, two men were walking near Rousillac Extension Road when they found Nicholas’ body in a drain. They called the police.

In 2015, Alleyne and the other man were convicted and sentenced by Justice Althea Alexis-Windsor. They successfully appealed and a retrial was ordered.

Alleyne was represented by attorneys Kelston Pope and Aaron Mahabir. The State was represented by prosecutor Norma Peters.