Mason sentenced for killing British nurse

MONTEGO BAY, St James – Thirty-two-year-old mason, Omar Reid, was today sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole before 25 years, for the murder of Barbara Scott, a British nurse who was 61 years old at the time of her death.

High court judge, Paulette Williams who sentenced Reid, said she was struck by his utter lack of remorse for the crime to which he pleaded not guilty, but for which he was found guilty by a 12-member jury after a one-day trial on Tuesday.

"You and the deceased were friends, she goes missing from March 12 and you do nothing to help. The jury believed that you hit her so hard in the head it fractured her skull, threw her into the pit like garbage and disappeared for weeks, that is what I have to sentence you for," she said.

Reid's attorney Kenneth McLeod, who asked the court to exercise the utmost leniency in passing sentence, said he will be appealing the matter as the evidence which did not support a murder conviction.

According to the evidence presented by the prosecution, Reid told the police that he hit Scott in her head during the course of a fight. However Reid, the father of a five-year-old son, denied this.

Scott's body was fished from a sewerage pit at her home in Somerton, St James, following a seven-day search.