23 years jail for child killer/rapist

Jul 04, 2018 Court Stories, Features / Columnists, News

A 25-year-old man was sentenced to 23 years in jail after he admitted to unlawfully killing nine year-old Shaquan Gittens, whose lifeless body was discovered in a trench with the penis severed aback of Houston, East Bank Demerara.
Brian Bobb-Semple who police had charged for the gruesome killing pleaded guilty to a manslaughter charge when he appeared at the High Court in Georgetown, yesterday, before Justice Sandil Kissoon.

MURDERED: Shaquan Gittens

Bobb-Semple, who was represented by Attorney-at-law Maxwell McKay, was initially charged with murder.
That charge had alleged that on April 14, 2015 in the County of Demerara, he murdered Gittens. But at his court appearance yesterday, he opted to plead guilty to the lesser offence manslaughter.
Appearing for the State was Prosecutors Mandel Moore and Abigail Gibbs.
According to information, on the evening of April 14, 2015, Bobb-Semple saw the little boy walking along Caneview Avenue, South Ruimveldt, Georgetown, and tripped him, causing him to fall to the ground.
He then dragged Gittens to an isolated area aback of the Houston Backlands where he had anal sex with him. Bobb-Semple choked the little boy who lost consciousness and then slept with him under a nearby tree.
However, the following morning after noticing that Gittens was motionless, Bobb-Semple had sex with him again after which he severed the child’s penis and dumped his body in a nearby trench.
A postmortem examination revealed that Gittens died of manual strangulation and drowning.

JAILED: Brian Bobb-Semple

During a plea of mitigation, McKay begged the court to have leniency on his client. According to the lawyer, no person in their right frame of mind would commit such an act. As such, the lawyer requested for Bobb-Semple to undergo psychiatric evaluations.
In fact, Bobb-Semple, who is now 25, had undergone several psychiatric evaluations at the hands of Government Psychiatrist Dr. Bhiro Harry who deemed him competent to stand trial for the offence back in 2016. He is not eligible for parole.