Widow, Barbadian together get 68 years’ imprisonment
-to be eligible for parole after serving 20 years

CONFESSED killers, Beverley Persaud and Barbadian national, Oswald Yaw, were on Tuesday sentenced to a total of 68 years’ imprisonment for the brutal murder of Herstelling blockmaker, Nathan Persaud. Demerara High Court judge, Justice Navindra Singh, sentenced Persaud to 29 years behind bars, while Yaw was sentenced to 39 years. The duo will become eligible for parole after serving a minimum of 20 years.
The duo was on trial for the capital offence of murder committed on Nathan, a blockmaker, on September 10, 2015, at Herstelling, East Bank Demerara. However, they opted to plead guilty to the lesser count of manslaughter. The State was represented by prosecutors, Tiffani Lyken while Attorneys-at-law Racheal Bakker and Ravindra Mohabir were on record for the accused. During a plea in mitigation, Bakker asked the court to temper justice with mercy since Yaw had expressed “sincere and deep remorse” for his actions. Bakker also said that Persaud preyed on Yaw and played with his emotions.

Meanwhile, Mohabir told the court that Persaud was abused by her husband and had suffered a miscarriage when she was four months pregnant due to severity of his beatings. In his address, Yaw pleaded with the court to give him a second chance.
“Please gave me a chance so that I could go back home to my five-year-old child. I am not a bad person,” he said.
Persaud, while begging the court for mercy, apologised for her actions, and said, “May the soul of the deceased find eternal peace.”
Prosecutor Lyken read the victim impact statement which was taken from the deceased’s mother Sylvie Persaud to the court. The woman in the statement said that her son was killed in one of the cruellest ways that one can think about.
She also remembered one of the last conversations she had with him on the telephone on that fatal day when he told her “to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord.”

“My son was killed in one of the cruel ways you can think out,” the woman said.
The Guyana Chronicle had reported that, on September 10, 2015, Persaud’s battered, lifeless body was discovered at his Herstelling home in a pool of blood.
According to reports, a neighbour heard screams from the residence, but did not think to investigate until a man was seen leaving the home several minutes later. This aroused his suspicions. The neighbour alerted others and they proceeded to the house, where they discovered Persaud’s body.
A brick and a hammer were found at the crime scene leading investigators to believe that the objects were used to murder Nathan. The number ‘20’ was also found smeared on a refrigerator in the house, equivalent to the number of times the man was hit as confirmed by a post-mortem examination report.
Yaw had reportedly confessed to the crime and told investigators that Beverley Persaud met with him several weeks prior to the murder and had invited him to carry out a hit on her husband in return for $1.7M to cover his travel overseas. He was reportedly paid $10,000 and promised $100,000 in weekly payments.
This newspaper was made to understand that Nathan was reportedly killed over a land dispute he had with his wife.