The Campus Trendz killer will give up the rest of his life for Tiffany Harding.
He will also do the same for Kellishaw Ollivierre.
In fact, 22-year-old Renaldo Anderson Alleyne has been ordered to spend the rest of his life behind bars for all six of the girls killed when he firebombed the Tudor Street boutique almost two years ago.
The six concurrent life sentences were handed down yesterday by Justice Elneth Kentish in a comprehensive hour-long determination in the No. 2 Supreme Court.
The last time multiple life sentences were handed down by a local High Court was in 1995 when then Justice Elliott (now Governor General Sir Elliott) Belgrave ordered Oral Andy Devere Cummins to spend three life sentences for kidnapping a nine-year-old schoolgirl from her Christ Church school on October 10, 1994; raping that girl in Bawdens, St Andrew, and wounding her with intent to do her serious bodily harm.
It was on September 3, 2010, that the Friday evening robbery, firebombing and resulting conflagration of the clothing store sent shock waves through the island.Alleyne, of Prescod Bottom, Hindsbury Road, St Michael, was later held and, at last year’s Session of the Continuous Sittings, threw in the towel and said that while he did not murder the girls, he did unlawfully kill Harding, Ollivierre, Kelly-Ann Welch, Shanna Griffith, Nikkita Belgrave and Pearl Cornelius.
Three of the girls were employees at the boutique, while the others were customers.Stressing repeatedly that the girls’ deaths were untimely, ghastly, painful and horrible, Justice Kentish told Alleyne only life sentences would be commensurate with the gravity and seriousness of the offences, especially since she felt he was a danger to society.
She said the question for her had been what was the appropriate length of sentence “having regard to the chilling circumstances surrounding these deaths”.“Regrettably, neither your co-operation with police, your clean record, your guilty pleas, nor your expressions of remorse, are sufficient to detract from, or neutralize the gravity of the offences and the senseless and horrific manner in which these young women met their deaths,” the judge told Alleyne who displayed no emotion.
“You took the lives of six very young women, in one fell swoop, in an act of callousness and utter lack of thought that defied understanding.”She said not only had Alleyne traumatized an entire society, but had specifically traumatized the families of the six girls and had changed their lives forever.In outlining the aggravating features of the case, the judge pointed to the fact that Alleyne “set out deliberately” to rob Campus Trendz armed with Molotov cocktails – “and that must surely be a first in the history of Barbados”; the manner in which he planned the robbery; the fact that the robbery was against a City business “at a time when there were large numbers of shoppers” and the fact that the women died “painful and horrible deaths from asphyxia”.
“These girls were unmindful of the danger of remaining inside of the boutique with smoke building [up] because they could never have imagined that the building would have been set on fire during the course of a robbery,” the judge noted.The judge said she accepted that it did not cross Alleyne’s mind that those people would have died “and therein lies your danger to society.
It is that simple-minded approach that I have earlier described as a frightening aspect of your character.”The judge also explained the reason for the delay in sentencing.She said while Alleyne had pleaded guilty in June 2011, the requested pre-sentencing report was only received on May 30, 2012, at a time when she was on sick leave.
The court had heard that Alleyne and another man entered the clothing boutique and demanded money of the owner, who was in the building.As they were escaping, Alleyne lit the homemade wick of one gasoline-filled beer bottle and tossed it inside the store. He then tossed the second Molotov cocktail at another door.During the robbery, the women had locked themselves in a room at the back of the boutique. They screamed as the flames engulfed the building, and their bodies, huddled together, were found with hardly a mark on them.
Death, two pathologists decided, was by asphyxiation due to smoke inhalation.Five of the victims – Welch, Cornelius, Olliverre, Belgrave and Harding – were pronounced dead at the scene, while Griffith, who was rushed to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, succumbed there.But the fleeing Alleyne was immediately recognized, not only by passers-by, but by people who were in the area and who had been at school with him.
In addition, police recovered a compact disc (CD) with closed circuit television footage of the incident inside the store.Police launched a massive manhunt and when Alleyne was picked up, he elected to write his own statement.
