Killer: I was protecting my wife

RICHARD NELSON fatally stabbed a man in order to defend his common-law wife, who was nine months pregnant, from a group of male hecklers who had surrounded her.

Nelson, 30, of Gowers Well Road, Fyzabad, was charged with murder, but pleaded guilty to a lesser count of manslaughter in the San Fernando High Court yesterday.

The plea was accepted by the State. Nelson will be sentenced by trial judge Justice Joan Charles on Monday.

The State’s case alleged that Nelson stabbed Radesh Boodoo twice in the chest with a pen-knife on June 19, 2002, at Gowers Well Road, Fyzabad, after Boodoo and his friend confronted Nelson’s pregnant wife Tracey-Ann. Saying that the accused was protecting his pregnant wife, Nelson’s attorney, Frank Rubert, asked Charles to place the accused on a bond.

Rubert asked the judge to consider that Nelson had been provoked, and noted that he had already spent four years in jail awaiting trial — the equivalent of six prison years.

In presenting the evidence of the case, State Attorney Angelica Teelucksingh told the judge that Nelson’s common-law wife was returning to their home at Gower’s Well Road at 11.35 pm, when she encountered Boodoo and his friends.

The men were liming on the road and, according to Teelucksingh, they began to heckle and harass Tracey-Ann. After she went inside her house, the woman came back outside and knocked a stick on the pavement, while complaining that she was fed-up of being harassed, Teelucksingh said.

Charles heard that common-law husband Nelson ran out of the house when he saw Boodoo and his friend, Russell Ali, confronting his wife on the road.

Teelucksingh said the accused spoke to the men and then stabbed Boodoo twice in the chest with a penknife.

During the attack, Tracey-Ann sustained a cut with the pen- knife. Boodoo was pronounced dead on arrival at the San Fernando General Hospital.

Teelucksingh disagreed with Rupert’s request for Nelson to receive a non-custodial sentence.

Although she admitted Nelson had been provoked and that he was defending his wife, she told the judge that Nelson needed to be imprisoned to reflect the heinousness of the offence of taking a human life.