Kurt Erskine is now awaiting sentence after a jury yesterday afternoon convicted him of the 2015 unlawful killing of Regent Multiplex Mall owner, Ganesh Ramlall called Boyo, who had been shot eight times.
Erskine had been on trial for the capital offence, but the jury unanimously convicted him on the lesser count of manslaughter.
Justice Simone Morris-Ramlall has deferred sentencing to March 28th, to facilitate the presentation of a probation report.
Erskine had originally been jointly-charged with Faizal Bacchus and Lennox Roberts; who both opted out of a trial and pleaded to manslaughter charges.
Roberts is currently awaiting sentence.
Bacchus, however, was last week released from prison after being credited for time served.
With that credit and other deductions from an 18-year sentence, Bacchus was on Tuesday last released from prison.
At a sentencing hearing the day before, Justice Morris-Ramlall imposed a sentence of 18 years on the former taxi driver, but made a number of deductions, which included among other things, for his early plea.
Following the various deductions, the final remaining sentence of 6 ½ years was also discounted, since the Judge ordered that credit be given for the period the offender had spent on remand awaiting trial.
In the circumstances, he has been released from prison.
Particulars of the charge against the trio stated that on July 5th, 2015, they murdered Ramlall during a robbery at his La Jalousie, West Coast Demerara home.
Bacchus had said that he acted as the “lookout.”
Leading his defence before the jury, however, Erskine said that he was innocent of the charge levelled against him.
While he admitted being at the scene to rob the now dead man, his story through his attorney Lyndon Amsterdam, was that he withdrew from the plan before the man was shot and killed, and contended on that basis that he is not guilty of murder.
Attorney Konyo Sandiford who prosecuted the matter had, however, asked the jury to find, from Erskine’s conduct, that he had not effectively withdrawn, and remained liable as a participant in the joint enterprise in which Ramlall was killed during the robbery.
Pathologist Dr. Nehaul Singh had testified that Ramlall had been shot a total of eight times and died from related injuries.
Meanwhile, in a tearful recount of the events of that fateful night, the man’s widow, Chitrakha Ramlall had told the court that she had just opened the door for her husband after he arrived home, when she was alerted to loud explosions.
The wife had previously told the court that as her husband did on any other night, he called and told her that he was on his way home and after coming out of bed, she proceeded to the living room where she waited for him.
She recalled that after his arrival sometime after midnight, he parked his vehicle and she opened the door to let him in the house and then proceeded to the upper flat of their home.
No sooner had she gotten upstairs, Ramlall said she heard “bullet” and her husband shouting “Thief! Thief!”
She said she immediately called out to neighbours who went to her assistance.
In between sobs, the woman had said that after rushing back downstairs she saw her husband lying face-down on the ground and stripped of his gold and diamond jewellery.
