Two men were sentenced yesterday after being found guilty of manslaughter.
Senior Justice Stephen Isaacs sentenced Shaun Knowles and Timothy Saunders both of Cowpen Road, to 17 years and 14 years respectively for causing the deaths of Edward Brennan, Erica Ward and Shakara Rahming on July 30th 2011.
The crown alleged that the killings were in retaliation for the July 12, 2011, murders of Kevin Forbes and Alwayne Leslie at a Haitian village off Montgomery Avenue.
Ward was pregnant with the child of Serrano Adderley, the 30-year-old man charged with the deaths of Forbes and Leslie. Knowles is the nephew of Forbes.
The victims were asleep in a one-bedroom apartment when intruders, who the prosecution alleged to be Knowles and Saunders, forced their way inside by blasting the locks with a shotgun. Once inside, they shot the woman in the head and Braynen in the back using a shotgun.
Though the jury’s 8-4 guilty verdict for three counts of murder was not acceptable in law, they found Knowles and Saunders guilty of manslaughter by provocation on the same count.
The jury also returned a guilty verdict on the remaining charges of possession of ammunition and two counts of possession of an unlicensed firearm, with which Knowles was separately charged.
The crown’s prosecutor was Cordell Frazier.
Knowles was represented by Ramona Farquharson- Seymour, while Saunders was represented from Lennox Coleby.
