2014 dredge owner killing: Getaway rider’s appeal against 25 years’ sentence to be heard Monday

Convicted killer Travis McDougal has made another bid for freedom, this time petitioning the Guyana Court of Appeal to overturn his manslaughter conviction and 25 years’ jail sentence. The case comes up for hearing at 09:30h on Monday before Chancellor of the Judiciary Justice Yonette Cummings-Edwards and Justices of Appeal Dawn Gregory and Rishi Persaud.

In June 2017, McDougal was imprisoned by Justice Navindra Singh after a jury found him unanimously guilty of manslaughter for the shooting to death of 43-year-old dredge owner Ashok Raghu. He was initially indicted for the capital offence of murder. The businessman was killed during a robbery outside the Botanical Gardens on Vlissengen Road, Georgetown, on August 18, 2014.
McDougal, formerly of East Ruimveldt, Georgetown, along with pork-knocker Jermaine Otto called “Fungus” who was one of the prisoners that perished in the deadly Camp Street Prison fire, following riots in March 2016, were both charged with Raghu’s murder.
Raghu was pronounced dead on arrival shortly after the shooting incident. His wife, who was 49 at the time, was shot to her left thigh. According to reports, the Raghus of 77 Pike Street, Kitty, Georgetown, were going to transact business with some $4 million in cash when bandits pounced on them at the traffic light. The man tried to resist the bandits and he was fatally shot.
During a sentencing hearing, defence counsel Nigel Hughes had told Justice Singh that his client had no brushes with the law prior to the businessman’s murder. Hughes, in appealing for a lesser sentence, had said that McDougal stayed on the “straight and narrow” path for most of his life, except for his association with Otto.
Notwithstanding the jury’s verdict, McDougal had maintained his innocence. But State Prosecutor Tuanna Hardy pressed for the maximum penalty, and in doing so, noted that the convict’s action put the public in danger as a gun was used to commit the “broad daylight” robbery.
Meanwhile, the jury was told that on the day in question, Otto asked McDougal to drop him in Kitty, Georgetown. McDougal had recounted that they were on the motorcycle and had reached the traffic light at Regent and Vlissengen Road when Otto jumped off and proceeded to a car.
“All I hear is shots,” he was quoted as saying in an alleged confession statement to the Police. However, although he maintained his innocence, Justice Singh told him that the evidence presented by the State pointed to him knowing about the robbery. “You would have had some knowledge of that a crime would have been committed that day,” the Judge had said to him. (G1)