The now 20-year-old Angelique Williams, who was charged with murdering her pregnant best friend in 2015, was on Tuesday sentenced to eight years’ imprisonment when she appeared before Justice Navindra Singh at the Georgetown High Court.
Williams had pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of manslaughter on April 6, 2017.
While handing down his sentence to the visibly remorseful young woman, Justice Singh advised her to utilise the educational system while in prison and to abstain from consuming alcohol.
As she was escorted out of the courtroom, the young woman was heard extending seemingly sincere apologies to her best friend’s family as well as her own.
On May 21, 2015, the accused, who was 18 years old at the time, reportedly stabbed her best friend, Renita Thomas, who was then 20, at Versailles on the West Bank of Demerara.
According to reports, the two women had been best friends for over five years. However, on the day of the incident, the duo, in the company of Thomas’ one-year-old child and some friends, went to the Aracari Resort on the West Bank of Demerara.
While they were leaving the location, the two girls got involved in an argument which escalated into a physical altercation. The altercation turned deadly when Williams armed herself with a broken bottle and repeatedly stabbed her best friend to the chest, stomach and head.
This happened in full view of the duo’s friends and Thomas’ child.
Reports in the media at the time indicated that the cause of the entire incident was jealousy on Williams’s part.
According to relatives, the best friends had made a pact to become pregnant at the same time and raise their children together. However, as they worked to make their plan a reality, Thomas got pregnant with her first child and Williams did not.
This angered Williams, but she reportedly “got over it” until the day in question when she accidentally learnt that Thomas was pregnant again and she had been “left in the dark”. (Ramona Luthi)
