…collapses in Court
Twenty five-year-old, Awena Rutherford has been found guilty, by a 12-member jury, of killing her two children on 27 March 2014.
After the decision was rendered, Rutherford was heard screaming and she subsequently collapsed on the courtroom floor.
After 20 minutes had expired and the woman was still on the floor, Justice Navindra Sing left the bench and adjourned the matter for Friday at 1pm for sentencing.
Rutherford who was on trial for fatally poisoning her two children maintained that she thought she was buying cold tablets for them.
Represented by Attorney Adrian Thompson, she is accused of giving her children, one-year-old Jabari Codogan and four-year-old Odascia Codogan, 2 halves of one carbon tablet which caused their deaths on the day in question.
The accused also drank two of the same tablets and was hospitalised for several days.
“Who would go to the Plaisance Bus Park to buy cold tablets from a man that sells rat poison?” was the question State Prosecutor Tiffini Lyken had put to the 12 member-jury during her closing address at Awena Rutherford’s manslaughter trial on Wednesday.
During Wednesday’s hearing, father of the two deceased children, Jabari Codogan Sr, testified via Skype from Brooklyn, New York, USA, that he supported his children even after he separated from Rutherford and that he communicated with them every day. The senior Codogan told the court that he was never told they were suffering from a cold but did admit under cross-examination that his son, Jabari, was treated for asthma-related conditions.
The overseas-based man had also stated that on the day of the deaths, he received a text message to call Rutherford on her number, but related that he did not have credit to do so. The father witnessed the post-mortem examinations of the children at the Georgetown Public Hospital and attended their funerals on April 6.
The accused and the children were staying with her sister, Monica Sealey and her husband Curt who both testified before the jury that they never noticed any cold symptoms in the children on that fateful day.
Government Pathologist, Dr Nehaul Singh confirmed that the children died from pesticide poisoning by way of ingesting aluminum phosphide which is commonly known as carbon tablets. Prosecutors Shawnette Austin and Abigail Gibbs also appeared for the State.
