Birthday stinger - Supermarket killer gets two life sentences
Published:Friday | March 6, 2020 | 12:00 AM
Damion Mitchell, Integration Editor
It was the birthday gift he never wanted: two life sentences and an order that he remain behind bars for 30 years before he becomes eligible for parole.
Justice Glen Brown handed down the sentence to 25-year-old Westmoreland killer Davion Brown on Wednesday.
The convict had earlier pleaded guilty in the Westmoreland Circuit Court to the daring August 2017 murder of supermarket packer Ocielle Hall, 22, and the shooting death of Gerald Denton, 41, in December 2017.
Brown is now in the second year of a three-year sentence after pleading guilty to a charge of illegal possession of a firearm. The judge ordered that he complete the term before starting the life sentences.
The two life sentences will, however, run at the same time.
The firearm conviction relates to a gun with which Brown was held when members of the Fugitive Apprehension Team finally nabbed him three Decembers ago.
Ballistics tests found no link to the two murders for which he has now been convicted.
According to the case file, shortly before his capture, Brown killed Denton, who he accused of being an informant and who he had threatened for four years.
But even before that, Brown was captured on closed-circuit television walking into the D&S Supermarket and Haberdashery on Great George Street in Westmoreland and shooting Hall seven times.
The video went viral on social media.
Hall had been on bail on a murder charge and had just started working at the supermarket.
In the video, after Hall received the first shots and collapsed, Brown went over him and fired several more rounds in plain view of shoppers, who had to scamper to safety.
The killer then walked briskly from the supermarket and left the area.
Brown has two other matters pending in the court: shooting with intent, and the other, illegal possession of a firearm.