2 sentenced for killing Princes Town PH-taxi driver in 2011

TWO men from south Trinidad have been sentenced for the killing of a Princes Town PH-taxi driver in 2011.

Keoma Dasrath, of Princes Town, and Barry Butcher, of Marabella, pleaded guilty to killing Nigel Huggins on January 22, 2011, in Rio Claro in a plea deal with the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions four months ago. They pleaded guilty to felony murder.

They were sentenced on Wednesday, for the gratuitous, callous, heinous and senseless killing of Huggings who was stabbed multiple times with a knife and bottle, struck with his own car and left for dead in a drain in Rio Claro.

After they received their discount for their guilty pleas and the time they’ve spent in prison, so far, was deducted, Dasrath and Butcher were each left with seven years, six months and 21 days to serve on their sentences.

They were sentenced by Justice Lisa Ramsumair-Hinds at a virtual sitting of the San Fernando High Court.

In their statements to the police, both men downplayed their involvement in the killing, instead, pointing fingers at the other and that of a third man who would have been the main witness in the case.

The judge suggested it was a cut-throat submission and based on each man’s account, she said, the precise nature of their roles could not be demarcated into a principal or secondary one. She also said neither warranted any further discount on the 30-year sentence she imposed, other than the one-third for their pleas and the time already spent in prison.

“Nothing below will meet the justice in the case.”

Huggins was hijacked by the three men and forced to drive to a location when he was stabbed in the neck while in the car. Huggins ran out of the car and was struck by it before being stabbed repeatedly. When the knife broke, he was stabbed with a broken bottle in the back.

Both men expressed their remorse for the killing. Dasrath several times before and Butcher on Wednesday moments before he was sentenced.

In a statement he read out, Butcher told the Huggins family how “very, very sorry he was” for the part he played in their relative’s untimely death.

He said he, too, knew their pain since two years after he was arrested for Huggins’s murder, his brother and sister were also murdered.

He said with God’s assistance he had reformed and transformed his life. His letter, he said, was testimony to that.

“I hope to re-enter society one day soon,” he said, speaking of the two-year-old daughter he left behind and asked for forgiveness.

“My fate is in your hands. I am very, very sorry please forgive me.”

Dasrath was represented by Renuka Rambhajan while Butcher was represented by Russell Warner and Aaron Patrick.

Assistant DPP Danielle Thompson represented the State.