KINGSTOWN, St. Vincent – The death of escaped prisoner and accused murderer Godwin Moses at the hand of police on Sunday may be seen as “justice in its own way,” Hans King, press secretary to Prime Minister Dr. Ralph Gonsalves said yesterday.
Police shot and killed the 27-year-old Rillan Hill man in Happy Hill, ending a three-week manhunt, during which he is believed to have also murdered dental technician Ewart “Ells” Kings on Dec. 4.
Moses and Tameka Sutherland, 19, were jointly charged with the Dec. 9, 2010murder of Steveon Springer of Layou in Kingstown.
“This young man, just 27 years old, … already chalked up quite a criminal record,” King said on radio yesterday.
“He is no more, basically,” King said in response to a caller who wanted to confirm that Moses had been captured.
“It may have been a two-in-one situation solved there, in terms of finding the killer of Ewart “Ells” King. I think the suspicion would be that this same guy, Moses, was the one who would have killed dental technician Ewart “Ells” King,” King said.
Police, in a release yesterday, said that the licenced firearm belonging to King was found in the omnibus Moses was travelling in moments before his death.
“Of course, that may bring some closure to the family on that aspect,” King said, regarding the stabbing death of the dental technician at his Pembroke home.
“[I] don’t know if it takes away their difficulties and their situation, having lost a breadwinner of the family, having lost a father and a husband. But some closure nevertheless in knowing, possibly, the man who perpetrated the crime is dead,” King further stated.
“That may bring some closure — justice in its own way, it may be seen as, because we know that, really and truly, with the way that the Privy Council in the United Kingdom has defined murders that deserve capital punishment — that is, hanging here in St. Vincent and the Grenadines — if you went to court, that may not have been seen as the worst of the worst,” he said, referring to King’s death.
The spokesman noted that locally, the standard for “the worst of the worst” killings was the beheading, disembowelling and burial of farmer Bertie Browne by Daniel “Compay” Trimmingham, whose death sentence was over turned by the London-based Privy Council, this country’s highest court for such offences.
“But those sitting in their high chambers in the United Kingdom don’t see that (Browne’s murder) as the worst of the worst. So, the hand of our judges here in St. Vincent and the Grenadines and in the Caribbean [are tied],” he said.
King noted that in the Commonwealth Caribbean, the Privy Council has made it “almost impossible to carry out hanging by setting the bar … by saying chopping off a man’s head, taking out his bowels and burying them and burying the man is not the worst of the worst.
“And that is what the judges here have to deal with, and in the Caribbean,” he said.