Latest update January 7th, 2025 4:10 AM
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Smiling killer given life sentence for burying infant niece alive
Smiling throughout his court appearance, Sherwin Roberts, who buried his one-year-old niece alive after throwing her out of a window, will most likely spend the rest of his life behind bars after pleading guilty to murder.
JAILED: Sherwin Roberts being escorted to the courtroom by a police rank
MURDERED: Ronasha Pilgrim
Roberts was given the life sentence when he appeared before Justice Jo-Ann Barlow at the High Court in Demerara yesterday, at the commencement of the October criminal assizes.
Roberts, who said he is 18 despite police records indicating that he was born on April 1, 1997, and should be 22, sat calmly in the prisoner’s dock.
He pleaded guilty to the charge which stated that on September 1, 2017 at Sophia, Greater, Georgetown, he murdered Ronasha Pilgrim, his niece.
Roberts, in addressing the court said: “I am so sorry. I didn’t mean to do it.” This led Justice Barlow to ask him, “Why did you do it?” Responding Roberts said, “I was angry with myself at the said time so I took it out on her (Pilgrim said).”
State Prosecutor Sarah Martin told the court that on the day in question, Roberts broke into the girl’s home where she was staying with three other minors. He had entered through a window.
The accused then snatched a chain from around the child’s neck.
When the child began to cry, Roberts then threw his niece out of a window and into some swampy mud.
Reports indicate that Roberts then buried his niece alive in a three-feet-deep muddy grave.
Ronasha Pilgrim’s cause of death was given as asphyxiation due to suffocation.
State Prosecutor Martin said that Roberts confessed to the killing in a caution statement he gave to the police.
She urged the court to consider the aggravating circumstances.
For one, she submitted that the killing was an unprovoked act. She also asked the court to consider that the little girl was just a year old and that she was killed at the hands of her own uncle. She also urged the court to be cognizant of the nature and gravity of the offence. Robert’s attorney lawyer, Maxwell McKay, on the other hand, said that his client has shown remorse for his actions.
The attorney also asked the court to consider that his client pleaded guilty at the first available time and didn’t waste judicial time.
At sentencing stage, Justice Barlow noted that Pilgrim died under the cruelest fashion anyone could think of. The Judge explained to Roberts that the aggravating circumstances in this case were overwhelming. In fact, she told him that the only mitigating factors the courts found were that he was a teenager at the time of the killing, and his early guilty plea.
Lending a word of advice, Justice Barlow urged Roberts to change his ways while in prison. She advised him to utilize remedial classes and ordered that he undergo anger management sessions.
Asked by the Judge if he could read and write, Roberts shyly responded in the negative. He was however told by the Judge that his situation is nothing to be ashamed of and that if he was not academically inclined, he should try his hand at technical skills.
Roberts only becomes eligible for parole after serving 20 years in prison. Justice Barlow had informed him that if he had been convicted by a jury, she would have still imposed the life sentence and set the possibility of parole after serving 30 years.
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