A 15-year-old who got with the wrong crowd and killed a man, execution-style, by shooting him in the head at a busy health centre in 2009, has been put under supervision for three years after the judge sentencing him said she satisfied he had paid a heavy price for his“brazen” act.
Marvin Alexander, now 29, was sentenced by Justice Lisa Ramsumair-Hinds on Monday and ordered to be released. He will report to the probation officers’ department for three years and continue his tutorship of the prison’s music band. If he fails to abide by the instructions of the probation officers, he will return to court for sentencing.
The judge said she was satisfied Alexander had reformed every aspect of his life as she referred to the various reports prepared ahead of her sentencing.
In November, last year, Alexander pleaded guilty to the murder of Lennox Bellerand, 23, on November 12, 2009, at the Success/Laventille Health Centre. Bellerand was shot in the head as he waited with his mother to visit a dentist at the health centre.
When he pleaded guilty, the agreed facts were read out by prosecutor Ambay Ramkellawan who said the health centre was busy at 8 am. Bellerand’s mother saw Alexander, whom she knew, walk past her and put a gun to her son’s head, shooting him. She grabbed Bellerand’s and Alexander’s jerseys, bawling out to the killer, “That is my son, boy.”
Bellerand then was shot again and fell forward, landing on his face between the chairs in the health centre. Bellerand’s mother saw when her son’s killer walked out of the health centre, giving the gun to another man who raised it in an attempt to fire but was rebuked by a nurse who shouted there were children at the institution.
Both ran off. Alexander was arrested at a house in John John a few weeks later and denied any involvement in the killing. Alexander was identified at a verification exercise.
Ramkellawan said the autopsy described the gunshot wound as an “execution-type wound.”
In a plea of mitigation, Alexander’s attorney, public defender Delica Helwig-Robertson, urged the court to temper justice with mercy as there was a “plethora” of mitigating factors to warrant a significant downward adjustment to any starting-point sentence the court had in mind.
She said this was not just a case of Alexander saying he was sorry. In a letter, he wrote himself and read out at the hearing, Alexander said he took full responsibility for his actions. He said he, every day, he reminded himself of the trauma he put Bellerand’s family through.
Helwig-Robertson said, in this case, the clanging of the prison gates behind a boy had deterred him from reoffending.
“This is not just a case where he is saying, ‘I am sorry.’” She also went through his accomplishments at the Youth Training and Rehabilitation Centre and the maximum security prison since his incarceration, which included distinctions in music theory from the Royal College of Music.
She said that the killing was committed in youth, but told the judge she was sentencing the man before her.
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