Thirty-five-year-old Steve Allicock was this afternoon sentenced to 60 years in jail after a jury unanimously found him guilty of the murder of Wendell Tappin.
Trial judge, Justice Navindra Singh, imposed the sentence, noting that the court had found no mitigating circumstances to consider.
The judge ordered that time served on remand, be deducted.
In his address to the court, prior to sentence, defence attorney Maxwell McKay said that his client has been a model prisoner and had no previous brushes with the law.
For her part, Prosecutor Tuanna Hardy asked the judge to impose a sentence which would reflect the gravity of the convict’s act.
She said that at only 23 years old, Tappin lost his life at the hands of the convict, who pierced his heart with a knife.
Meanwhile, when given a chance to speak, the visibly shocked Allicock continued to maintain his innocence.
The father of seven stressed that he was nowhere around at the time of the killing.
According to him, the testimony of Tappin’s father against him, was fabricated.
Allicock’s children and other relatives cried uncontrollably after the verdict was announced.
One of the man’s visibly distraught daughters, immediately rushed out behind him, and had to be restrained by police officers, as he was being escorted from the courtroom.
The 12-member mixed jury returned its verdict after about three hours of deliberations.
The convict’s father, Leonard Allicock, who was acquitted of the said charge back in 2014, loudly remonstrated as he left the court complex, voicing his discontent with the verdict.
Leonard, along with his brother, Randolph Allicock, were jointly charged with Tappin’s murder, but both had been subsequently cleared of the indictment.
The capital indictment against Steve Allicock, stated that on December 31, 2009, at Hill Street, Albouystown, Georgetown, he murdered Tappin, called ‘Keyco.’
Mc Kay had argued that his client was in Suriname at the time of the killing, the state, however, contended that Steve Allicock fled to Suriname, only after committing the offence.
In his testimony, father of the deceased, Dan Tappin, refuted the claims advanced by the defence.
He had told the court that he was on the scene when the accused, who he has known for more than 20 years, stabbed his son.
Before his arraignment, Steve Allicock had eluded capture for over five years.
He was represented by McKay and attorney Debra Kumar.
The state’s case, meanwhile, was presented by Hardy, in association with prosecutors Tamieka Clarke and Seeta Bishundial.
The trial was heard at the High Court in Georgetown.
Tappin, 23, and a father of two, was fatally chopped about his body while on his way to collect a cell phone in Hill Street, Albouystown.
Pathologist Dr Vivekanand Brijmohan, had given the cause of death as shock and haemorrhage, and a stab wound to the heart.
Accounts are that two men confronted Tappin, with one holding him down while the other chopped him. Tappin was rushed to the Georgetown Hospital, where he was later pronounced dead.
