After weeks of delay and professing his innocence, 26-year-old Kevon Alfred on Tuesday admitted to killing 75-year-old re-migrant Joyce Lewis at her home at Lot 3630 Christiani Street, North Ruimveldt, Georgetown.
Alfred, who appeared in the High Court before Justice Navindra Singh, was set to go on trial after switching his attorney, Senior Counsel Stanley Moore, last week, and rejecting advice to plead guilty. However, after a discussion with his new attorney, George Thomas, Alfred changed his mind and pleaded guilty to the lesser count of manslaughter.
Murdered remigrant Joyce Lewis
Alfred, of Crane Housing Scheme, West Coast Demerara, maintained in court that his friend — Cordell Eastman, called “Gaza” — who had hired him as a taxi driver, was the one who had killed the elderly woman on March 26, 2014. Alfred claimed he had simply witnessed “Gaza” chasing after the re-migrant, and going into her home.
In his explanation, Alfred declared that he had met up with Eastman one day prior to his sister’s birthday (March 25, 2016), and had agreed to transport him via a car that he had borrowed. The accused also claimed that after he was directed to the Ruimveldt area where Lewis lived, his friend went inside the house while he waited outside. Adding that he did not know the area since he was from West Demerara, Alfred said he became tired waiting, and that is when he went into the elderly woman’s residence and saw what he alleged to had transpired.
State Prosecutor Abigail Gibbs, however, retorted that Alfred was an unwanted guest, who had entered Lewis’s home, strangled the woman to death, robbed her, and had used her mobile phone to sell the items to a witness, who was set to testify.
Jailed: Kevon Alfred
Before sentencing him to 23 years in prison, Justice Singh told Alfred that even though he had pleaded guilty, he showed no sign of remorse. The sentence passed on Alfred took into account that he did not waste the court’s time.
According to reports, Lewis’s lifeless body was found in her home by Police and her sister, Veronica Deen, on the morning of March 26, 2014. She reportedly was also found with her underwear pulled to her ankles and dark marks around her neck.
Five months after Lewis was killed, Alfred was arrested and charged with the murder. Reports are that Alfred’s fingerprints were among several that detectives had found in the slain woman’s home. (Shemuel Fanfair)
