‘Betrayed’ by daughter’s killer

Those were the words Samantha Bristol threw at Roger Delisle Sealy, the man convicted of murdering her daughter Samara Bristol five years ago.

Sealy, of Airy Cot, St Thomas, was back in the No. 4 Supreme Court yesterday after he had been found guilty, at a previous Session of the Continuous Sittings, of murdering the Barbadian-American sometime between November 16 and 21, 2021.

He was represented by attorney Sian Lange, while Director of Public Prosecutions Alliston Seale, SC, and Senior State Counsel Paul Prescod prosecuted.

A tearful Bristol, who was giving her victim impact statement, said she thought about her daughter “every single day”.

“I had so many plans for us,” she said, as she read her statement.

She added that “not even the smallest thought alerted me that evil lurked among us”.

“I was shocked. I could not believe that I would be betrayed in the most vicious way. Samara did not deserve this. Eden [Samara’s daughter] did not deserve this. My family and I did not deserve this. I would not wish this on anyone. The emotional and mental fatigue continues to plague my thoughts,” the mother said.

Bristol explained she had problems sleeping; she experienced headaches and nightmares; she suffered from anxiety, nervousness and severe depression.

“I questioned God and yet it is my God that gives me the strength to face each day,” she declared. “What is justice?” she then asked. “You still breathe. You have your family. You get to see another day. My Samara is gone.”

She also read a letter from Samara’s now 17-year-old daughter Eden, who said losing her mother at a young age “fundamentally changed the direction of my life”.

Samara’s daughter wrote she felt “lost” and wondered how she “was supposed to navigate life without the comfort of my mother”.

“No child should have to experience that,” Eden wrote.

Justice Laurie-Ann Smith-Bovell adjourned the matter until November 3 when attorneys will make submissions on Sealy’s sentence.