Twenty-five-year-old Ryan Bobb-Semple was on Tuesday sentenced to 23 years’ imprisonment after he admitted to the gruesome killing of nine-year-old Shaquan Gittens whom he sodomised, strangled, dismembered and threw into a canal.
He pleaded guilty to the lesser count of manslaughter before Justice Sandil Kissoon at the High Court in Georgetown on Tuesday morning.
According to the facts of the case, the lad went missing on April 1, 2015 after venturing out into the streets to fly a kite in North Ruimveldt, Georgetown, but his body was discovered several days later in a semi-nude state floating in a canal aback Houston, East Bank Demerara.
Bobb-Semple later confessed to taking the boy to an abandoned canefield where he committed the heinous acts before throwing the boy’s body into the canal. Gittens’ cause of death was given as asphyxiation and drowning.
When the killer appeared before Justice Kissoon, he wore a worried expression, but did not have much reaction when the sentence was imposed.
His attorney, Maxwell McKay, in a mitigation plea, said that no one in their right mind could carry out such an act and noted his client’s need for psychiatric help.
Justice Kissoon’s sentence computation included nine years six months for the cruelty meted out to the victim.
The Judge ordered that Semple benefit from remedial training that is offered at the prison.
State Counsel Abigail Gibbs presented the indictment. No relative of either the killer or the young boy was present in court.
Guyana Times International understands that Gittens’ mother chose not to attend the sentencing of her child’s killer.
