Rape accused remanded for killing daughter’s boyfriend
A man awaiting High Court trial for allegedly raping a 14-year-old girl was on Thursday remanded to prison for killing his daughter’s boyfriend.
Dead: Leon Gittens
Sherwayne Brandt, 44, also known as “Brave”, was arraigned before Chief Magistrate Ann McLennan in that Georgetown Magistrate’s Court. He was not required to plead to the indictable charge which stated that, on February 18, at Freeman Street, East La Penitence, Georgetown, he murdered 25-year-old Leon Gittens.
Brandt has been remanded to prison until March 22.
Police Headquarters have said that Gittens, of 118 Cowan Street, Kingston, Georgetown, was shot dead at around midnight on the day in question.
A Police report said the young man, who had shared an intimate relationship with Brandt’s daughter, had allegedly been threatened by his girlfriend’s father last month.
Murder and rape accused Sherwayne Brandt at the Georgetown Magistrates’ Courts on Thursday
It has been reported that, on the fateful day, the young man had gone to the La Penitence location to pick up his girlfriend. She told detectives that she observed her father dressed in a blue dress, with a wig on his head and armed with a black handgun, entering the yard; and as she ran for cover, she heard three loud explosions similar to that of gunshots, after which her father ran from the yard and made good his escape.
Upon checking, she saw Gittens lying motionless in front of a bedroom, and an alarm was raised. The injured young man was rushed to the Georgetown Public Hospital, where he was pronounced dead on arrival.
Brandt, who reportedly disapproved of his daughter’s relationship with Gittens, was arrested on Monday by Police ranks at the Eugene F. Correia International Airport, where he was in the process of boarding a flight to Trinidad and Tobago with an onward connection to the United States of America.
Meanwhile, in January 2019, Brandt, then a bus driver, was committed to stand trial at the Demerara High Court for allegedly raping a schoolgirl.
The charge against him states that on October 7, 2015, at Plum Park, Sophia, Greater Georgetown, he engaged in sexual penetration of a child under age 16.
Reports state that the young girl was a frequent traveller in a minibus that Brandt operated. It is alleged that he took the teen to an unknown area in Sophia and raped her.
