(Trinidad Express) For raping a woman at gunpoint 12 years ago, a Morvant man was on Thursday sentenced by a High Court judge to serve 25 years in prison.
The sentence was imposed on 30-year-old Akiedo Guerra, by Justice Devan Rampersad at the Hall of Justice in Port of Spain, one week after Guerra was found guilty of the crime by a nine-member jury.
In addition to the 25-year sentence, the judge also imposed a sentence of 12 years for possession of a firearm. Those sentences are to run concurrently, meaning that Guerra will serve only 25 years behind bars. However, given that he had been in prison for the past seven-and-a-half years awaiting trial, having been unable to access bail, that time has also been deducted from the original sentence.
According to the evidence that was presented by State prosecutor Joy Balkaran, on May 18, 2005, Guerra raped the woman at Second Caledonia, Morvant. During the trial, the woman had testified that she was walking through the area, when she was approached by Guerra and another man who at the time were armed with a firearm.
Both men proceeded to rob her of $50 before forcing her to walk to a near-by track where they forced her to perform oral sex on them at gun point and then took turns raping her. The second man was never arrested.
In passing sentence, the judge said even though Guerra was only 18 years old at the time of the incident and also had a previously clean criminal record, this could not be considered as mitigating factors, since he never showed any remorse for committing the “heinous” crimes.
The judge said he also took into consideration submissions made by Balkaran who stated that even though the State had strong evidence against Guerra, he still chose to have the matter proceed to trial. Investigators she said, were able to obtain a sperm sample which was taken from the victim after the attack which matched Guerra’s DNA she said.
“Victims of these kinds of attackers are literally like the living dead. Most of them never get over it and are unable to lead normal lives,” said Balkaran.
