Hitmen killing for $3 000, says DPP

This was the revelation by Director of Public Prosecutions Alliston Seale, SC, who says he sees all this information from the files that land on his desk.

“For filthy lucre, for nasty piece of end of money and you could be the next target. We know there are those persons in Barbados. Some in prison now and some out. And it all comes back to this dope that they’re smoking.”

The island’s top prosecutor was speaking in the No. 4 Supreme Court yesterday.

“We cannot deny the fact that we have hitmen, a man that you could pay and he would go and shoot somebody that never did him anything,” the Senior Counsel said.

“People are being paid to kill somebody and when you hear how much money it is – $3 000. These are the things I see every day when files come on my desk,” he declared.

“A person’s life, you would think that at least you would put more value on it. And even if the man who wants to pay for the killing is prepared to pay little or nothing because he is getting a deal, one would hope that the killer would say you got to pay me more than that.

“You got to pay me that when I go jail and come out in 40 years I still got a good living so you got to pay me about $3 million,” he said.

The DPP once again blamed such actions on the smoking of marijuana.

He said the use of the psychotropic drug was one of the reasons why “people would just drive up to a group of people sitting down playing dominoes and shoot”.

“They don’t care who they shoot. They don’t have the presence of mind to say other people there. Half their head so twist that a fellow could give you $3 000 and you walk down the road and shoot a man you don’t know, who ain’t had nothing to do with you.”

Seale, however, reiterated that the prosecution would be asking for a tariff of 40 years for anyone found guilty or who pleaded guilty to murder.

And it does not matter if the killer is a man or woman.

“We cannot go any lower,” he said, explaining that those who confess are entitled to a one-third discount. This, he said, reduces that 40-year tariff by about 13 years.

“If we even look at a starting point below that, we will be making sport at the death of our people. My philosophy is simple – any time you kill somebody in Barbados the starting point must be 40 years in the absence of any guidelines for murder in Barbados. (HLE)