KINGSTOWN, St Vincent – A High Court judge has sentenced 43-year-old Kamara Lampkin to life imprisonment after he was found guilty of murdering a badly beaten man in 2018.
His co-accused, Phil Dover, 27, whose testimony helped to secure a murder conviction, will spend a further seven years in prison. He was given a 12-year jail term, one third of the full amount he would have had to serve had it not been for his guilty plea and evidence against Lampkin.
Justice Bryan Cottle ruled that Lampkin be brought back before the court after 30 years to see if he is sufficiently rehabilitated to be released.
If he is not rehabilitated — and in the absence of parole legislation — Lampkin’s case would be reviewed every three years.
Before being sentenced, Lampkin apologised to the family of his victim, Carson Warner, 27, “for what happened to Carson not because of me.
“I was there, so I have to tell them sorry,” Lampkin said, before his lawyer told him to say no more.
Lampkin was convicted after a full trial on the indictment that had charged him and Dover with Warner’s murder. However, Dover pleaded guilty to manslaughter and testified for the prosecution.
The court heard that on August 24, 2018, Warner, Dover, Lampkin and Dwayne Walker, were drinking together at Campden Park, visiting several bars before going to Walker’s home, where they continued to drink.
There, a disagreement broke out and Lampkin and Dover set upon Warner and beat him badly.
They bound his arms and legs and wrapped him, bleeding, in a sheet and took him to another venue where he was chopped and his body tossed against the rocky foreshore below.
Warner died of his injuries and a forensic pathologist identified 19 such wounds.
Walker, along with Rawle Bowens, a 25-year-old mechanic, were also charged with murder, but as the preliminary inquiry began at the Serious Offences Court in February 2019, the prosecution withdrew the charge against Walker and Bowens , who had spent six months in prison awaiting the start of the inquiry.
Lampkin, a father of three denied culpability but expressed apology in court for the part he played in the killing, the judge said during the sentencing phase. (CMC)
