It took less than two hours for a jury to reject Roger Sealy’s claim of self-defence as it unanimously convicted him of murdering 30-year-old Samara Bristol.
The Airy Cot, St Thomas man gave no reaction from the dock of the No. 4 Supreme Court as the guilty verdict was read to the charge of murdering Bristol between November 16 and 21, 2021.
Defence attorney Sian Lange requested pre-sentence and psychological reports.
Justice Laurie-Ann Smith-Bovell remanded him to Dodds Prison for sentencing, before thanking the jury members for their service and adjourning the case until September 18.
The court heard from a forensic scenes of crime officer who had gone to a home at Airy Cot and found fire and heat damage to several of the rooms, and blood in the house and on the roadway in the early morning hours of November 17. Four days later, he saw Bristol’s body in a bushy area in Mangrove, St Thomas, with his skull cracked open and face disfigured.
Taking the witness stand, Bristol’s mother, Samantha, who lives between Barbados and the United States, told the court that she and Sealy had been together for a few years and that the relationship had become rocky around the same time as her daughter’s death.
Her home in Airy Cot had been under renovation as it was being changed from wood and wall and being extended. She was financing these renovations solely, while Sealy was providing the labour.
The witness said that her daughter arrived in Barbados on November 10. She recalled being at her US residence six days later and receiving a call that there were screams coming from her St Thomas home.
She called a neighbour in Barbados and asked him to check. He told her that the front door’s glass was broken, no one was home, and he saw blood.
In his unsworn statement from the dock, Sealy testified that after going home from work, he found that none of his keys worked in the front or back doors and he broke a glass to gain entry.
“When I get inside, not knowing anyone was there, Ms Bristol she attacked. She tell me I can’t come in the house, went in the kitchen, take up a knife and proceed to come at me, so I defend myself and I struck her and as soon as she fall to the ground, that was the last blow she received from me.”
Sealy continued: “I am not proud of what happened. I panicked. I should have called the police, but I panicked and try to conceal the body and I did move it.”
A forensic pathologist ruled that the cause of death was blunt force trauma to the head and that she had been struck multiple times.
“This type of injury will result in fatality as her brain was lacerated and hemorrhaged, causing her death immediately,” he told the court.
Acting Deputy Director of Public Prosecutions Alliston Seale SC and State Counsel Paul Prescod prosecuted the case.
(JB)
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