MONTEGO BAY, St James – A middle-aged Rastafarian woman was yesterday sentenced to seven years in prison after she was convicted on Monday of the manslaughter of her 16-year-old nephew, Omari Wood.

Deloris Williams, a 51-year-old office attendant, had been charged with murder arising from the January 1, 2005 beating she is said to have given Wood with a machete.

Wood later collapsed and was pronounced dead when he was taken to the Cornwall Regional Hospital.

But on Monday, the jury of seven men and five women returned a guilty verdict after Justice Mr Mahadev Dukaran, who presided, explained the difference between murder and manslaughter, pointing out that they could only find Williams guilty of murder if they thought she intended to kill her nephew or cause him serious harm.

Forensic pathologist Dr MP Sarangi, who performed the autopsy told the court on Monday that Wood’s brain appeared swollen during the autopsy on January 6. He said Wood’s brain weighed 1320 grams, while the normal brain of someone his age would have weighed about 1000 grams.

Dr Sarangi said his examination of the body showed one external injury, a bruise to the inside of the left elbow, saw an injury to the back of the skull that showed haemorrhaging.

The injury, he said, was consistent with a “stunning injury to the head” that would cause the brain to move about with some force inside the skull.

Death, he said, would have occurred within minutes.

Williams, who the court heard was a “devout member of the Rastafarian faith since age 18 years”, gave sworn statement from the dock and denied ever hitting her nephew in the back of the head. She insisted she hit him once on the left arm when he refused to obey her instructions to take some wires from her yard.