Cocoa Piece mass murderer to serve five life sentences
Rushane Barnett, the man who brutally murdered a Clarendon mother and her four children, was a short while ago ordered to serve five concurrent life sentences.
Barnett was ordered to serve 61 years and eight months in prison before being eligible for parole.
The sentence was handed down by Justice Leighton Pusey in the Home Circuit Court.
While the judge disclosed his decision, Barnett sat stoically.
The victims, his cousin Kimesha Wright and her children Kimanda Smith, 15, Sharalee Smith, 12, Rafaella Smith, 5, and 23-month-old Kishawn Henry Jr, were discovered inside their Cocoa Piece home in Clarendon with chop wounds and their throats slashed on June 21.
According to Barnett, his cousin had disrespected him in the days before the murders. He claimed that a customer had come to the premises and he served the costumer but his cousin was upset and told him he was never to serve her customers and grabbed the cash from his hand and splashed water into his face. He said he was offended from that instant. A subsequent interaction with his cousin, he said, led to the stabbings.
Barnett was convicted in July of five counts of murder in relation to the killings.
READ: Rushane Barnett pleads guilty to murdering family of five
At the sentencing hearing in September, Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) Paula Llewellyn had argued that Barnett, who pleaded guilty to five counts of murder, should get life in prison and should serve no less than 60 years before being eligible for parole, despite the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions’ notice that the Crown would seek the death penalty.
The death penalty was withdrawn, according to the DPP, because he had pleaded guilty to the charges
