Businessman gets 7 years for Manslaughter in retrial
A businessman today received for the second time a sentence of seven years behind bars after a jury last week found him guilty of Manslaughter. Thirty-eight year old Edward Reyes, also known as “Mandito” who owns Prime Cut Meats on Central American Boulevard, listened as Justice Adolph Lucas handed down the sentence this morning. His sentence is in connection with the shooting death of fifty-one year old Norman “Butta” Ferguson. Before passing down the sentence, Justice Lucas heard mitigation pleas from ten character witnesses on Reyes’ behalf. They included: Director of James Brodie’s, Curtis Musa; Financial Consultant, Sydney Campbell; high school teacher, Colville Young Junior; Executive Director of Beltraide, Michael Swift; former civilian prosecutor, Houston Carr; Chairman of Kolbe Foundation, John Woods; Senior Immigration Officer, Horace Guzman; retired public officer, Orton Clarke; Clerk of the National Assembly, Herbert Panton; and businessman, Ryan Swift. Justice Lucas told Reyes that he was handing down the same sentence as in his first trial since he could not find any law that authorized him to increase or decrease the duration of the sentence. The maximum sentence for Manslaughter is life imprisonment.
On March twenty-fourth 2006, Reyes was convicted of the same charge for the same incident and was sentenced to seven years. He had been serving that sentence but appealed and the Court of Appeal ordered a retrial. But even though Reyes’ had already served almost two years of his first sentence, his new sentence places him right back at square one and he’s now looking at a fresh seven years. But that is little comfort to Kendra Tucker, the niece of the victim. She feels that a crime such as this should carry a harsher penalty.
Kendra Tucker, Niece of Deceased
“He was not a blackbird that you could just go and shoot down and nobody cares. He belonged to somebody. He had his family that loved him and I believe that even before you pull the trigger of a gun you know in your heart that you should not kill and that if you do decide to take someone’s life that you have to pay the consequences. And I believe that the system in a way did not work for us. There is no seven years enough for that life that he took. That was my uncle and I had loved him all my life and he had given great service to me as a niece and had given good service to Mando’s family.”
Norman Ferguson was shot in the chest on Saturday, January twenty-second, 2005 while he was inside Prime Cut Meats.
