Like his co-convict had done in a challenge filed before the Guyana Court of Appeal, Kelvin Persaud is also arguing that his life sentence for the 2017 murder of Cayenne-based clothes vendor Purcell Moore, was too severe.
Like Selwyn Dawson, Persaud is contending that his sentence was “too severe” in all of the circumstances of his case. It is currently the lone ground on which he has mounted his challenge before the local appellate court.
The appeals are yet to be heard.
The jointly-charged duo had been on trial for Moore’s murder when they changed their pleas mid-trial; admitting that they, in the company of another, had unlawfully killed the man after robbing him of his gold chain on the morning of December 20th, 2017, at Old Road, Craig, East Bank Demerara.
After accepting their pleas in June of last year, Justice Sandil Kissoon handed them life sentences; ordering that they spend 15 years in jail before being considered for parole.
A police Detective who lives in the area where the fatal shooting occurred had testified to seeing Dawson and Persaud, whom he said he knew well from the community, fleeing the scene after the shooting.
The Detective, Andre Higgins, had told the court that they each then got onto bicycles and fled the scene riding in his direction.
As they got closer to him, Higgins had said he recognized the third person whom he said he also knows and identified by the name Wayne Chester called ‘Smokey,’ stuffing “a black firearm in his pants waist.”
He had said that as the young men rode past looking at him and he at them; he said nothing to them nor did they say anything to him.
He said they proceeded to the public road where he eventually lost sight of them.
Moore had arrived home in Guyana for vacation from Cayenne, French Guiana only a few days before he was shot and killed.
