Teen gets 20 years for 11-y-o's murder
Published:Wednesday | February 17, 2010 | 12:00 AM
Barbara Gayle, Staff Reporter
The teenager who pleaded guilty last month to the murder of 11-year-old Aamir Dwight Scott of Sandside, St Mary, was yesterday sentenced to 20 years' imprisonment.
"He got what he deserved," Scott's mother, Andrea Folkes, said after the sentence was passed on the 17-year-old youth.
Folkes, along with members of the Sandside community, had called for the death penalty.
Justice Gloria Smith, in passing sentence in the Home Circuit Court, commented on last year's high murder rate and said a startling number of children were among those killed.
Scott, who was a student at Trinity Primary School, St Mary, went missing after he went to visit friends on September 14, 2008. A search was launched and, on September 16, 2008, his dismembered body was found in a bag in bushes in Sandside.
Five persons were detained in connection with the murder but only the teenager was charged after he gave a confession statement to the police. He told the police that Scott had threatened that he was going to let his father shoot him, so he strangled him and "cut up" his body.
Game gone wrong
In the social-enquiry report, the teenager told probation officers Fiona Wilson and Judimore Barnett Grant that he was playing a game with Scott and he squeezed his neck too tight and he died. He said he got assistance from a fellow to dissect the body.
Defence lawyer Lloyd McFarlane, in his impassioned plea for leniency, asked the judge to sentence the teenager under Section 3 of the Offences Against the Person Act, which carries a minimum sentence of 15 years.
The judge commended the probation officers for the comprehensive report. She said that, although the teenager showed remorse and asked for an apology to be made to the deceased's parents, she had to pass a sentence which would have a deterrent effect on persons who were like-minded.