– for sentencing July 16
A man who killed his girlfriend 11 years ago, survived a suicide attempt and fled to the interior will be sentenced on July 16, after a probation report is presented.
Harold Dey, who had been charged with the murder of his girlfriend
Samantha Gordon, yesterday pleaded guilty to the lesser count of manslaughter when he appeared before Justice Winston Patterson at the Berbice Assizes. His plea was accepted by State Counsel Fabayo Azore.
According to the facts of the case, Dey had chopped Gordon’s neck at their home at Princetown, Corriverton, Corentyne, on March 9, 1998, and then had drunk a dose of Shelltox insecticide. He was rushed to the New Amsterdam hospital where his stomach was pumped and when he recovered, he fled to the interior, where he got married and fathered a child. However, he was arrested by the police seven years later in September 2005.
After Dey formally pleaded guilty to manslaughter yesterday, his lawyer Michael Baird, requested through the court, a probation report on the background of his client. The report is expected to be available by July 16.
Summarising the case, Azore said prosecution witness Adolphus Alder, called ‘Mason’ had known Dey for eight years prior to the incident. Alder, he said, had also known Gordon who was his niece-in-law.
On the day in question, Alder, a carpenter, went to work in a yard at Lot 52 Princetown, Corriverton, where the deceased and Dey lived.
According to the prosecution, Dey was looking through the window, Alder said, and Gordon who was preparing to do some laundry, asked him [the witness], for some soap powder.
Shortly thereafter, the lifeless body of Gordon, with a wound to the neck was seen in the said tub of clothes she was preparing to wash. Blood stains were seen on her head and shoulders.
According to Azore, investigators revealed that a cutlass suspected to be the murder weapon was recovered in the kitchen and was subsequently tendered as an exhibit in the Preliminary Inquiry held at the Springlands Magistrate Court.
Subsequent to the incident, checks were made for Dey, but efforts proved futile.
However, in a statement, taken on September 12, 2005, Dey confessed to chopping Gordon with a cutlass. After which he drank Shelltox, in a suicide bid, but was taken to the New Amsterdam Hospital where the insecticide was flushed out of his body.
He thereafter went to the interior and was a married father of one when he was arrested.
The post-mortem report, Azore said, listed Gordon’s cause of death as haemorrhage due to a severed carotid artery (the vein which takes oxygenated blood to the head) along with a fractured neck.
