JUSTICE DONALD McIntosh has ordered Richard Fletcher, a 21-year-old architecture student who was convicted of motor manslaughter to pay $550,000 to the deceased's mother by March 15 next year.
Fletcher, was also ordered to pay $200,000 to Dermoth Flowers who was injured in the accident.
The judge fined Fletcher a total of $1 million or five years imprisonment. The judge stipulated that $250,000 was for the fine, $550 was to be paid to Hilma Brown, mother of the deceased Andre Faircuff and $2,000 to Flowers who suffered broken legs.
Fletcher was ordered to pay forthwith $100,000 from the fine and pay the balance along with the $750,000 by March 15 next year. Fletcher was given time to pay the money but was ordered to get someone to stand surety in the sum of $1 million.
In awarding compensation, the judge said that did not preclude the parties from pursuing a civil suit.
The Crown represented by Grace Henry, Crown Counsel, led evidence at the trial in the Home Circuit Court last week Wednesday that at about 1:45 a.m. on November 19, last year, Faircuff, a deejay known as Mr. Flex was killed on Old Hope Road, Kingston.
Witnesses testified that Fletcher was driving very fast down Old Hope Road when his car hit a push cart which Faircuff was operating. Flowers who was near to Faircuff was injured in the accident. Fletcher was subsequently arrested and charged with manslaughter.
Fletcher who was represented by attorney Richard Rowe had denied the allegations. He said it was the deceased who pushed the cart out into the path of the motorcar.
The jury convicted Fletcher of manslaughter on Wednesday and sentencing was put off until yesterday.
Mr. Rowe, in his mitigation plea, asked the judge not to send Fletcher to prison. He asked the judge to take into account the evidence of the character witnesses who disclosed that Fletcher was very depressed after the accident. He had expressed remorse and was undergoing psychological treatment. The witnesses had said that Fletcher had become withdrawn and had expressed the view that it was unfair for a mother to have lost her son and it was he who should have died instead.
Fletcher, a Jamaican who obtained a government scholarship to study architecture in Cuba, was advised by the judge to seek to make himself a better man. The judge encouraged him to live life well rather than to cherish the thought about dying.
