STATING that her nephew Rushane Barnett who knifed her daughter and four grandchildren to death deserved the five life sentences he was slapped with on Thursday by a Supreme Court judge, a grieving mother Gwendolyn McKnight says the message sent is ” when somebody is good to you, you don’t try to stab them in the back”.

At the same time, she said while the fact that her nephew will remain behind bars and will be well over 80 by the time he is eligible for parole cannot restore her family, “at least a little satisfaction is there”.

On Thursday Supreme Court Judge Justice Leighton Pusey, in making his ruling, told Barnett that for the lives of 31-year-old Kimesha Wright; her children, 15-year-old Kimanda Smith; 11-year-old Shara-Lee Smith; five-year-old Rafaella Smith; and 23-month-old Kishawn Henry, he would serve a life sentence on each count with eligibility for parole after 61 years and eight months. Those sentences will run concurrently.

Speaking with the media outside the Supreme Court in downtown Kingston where the ruling was made, a glum McKnight who was accompanied by family members said: “I just want to thank everyone that stood by me to help my daughter and grandchildren get the justice that they deserve. I know the justice they got cannot bring them back but at least a little satisfaction is there, and I am thanking the judge so much for understanding my grief and pain that I went through so that he could give him what he deserves.”

She said it was hoped that the family would find closure now.

Meanwhile, McKnight’s sister Leonora, who had been the one to comfort her sibling all along, lost the battle to tears torn in her grief while explaining that her convicted nephew had at one point been at her house in St James before going to Wright’s home in Clarendon.

“Anything you ask him to do he jump and do it. He loves to work, I don’t know what went up in his head,” she said, her eyes brimming with tears. The sisters who told the Jamaica Observer that Barnett’s mother, who is their eldest sister, has since apologised after refusing to speak to them in the days following

The bodies of Wright and her children were discovered inside their home with chop wounds and their throats slashed on the morning of Tuesday, June 21 by another relative. Barnett reportedly fled the area to Wilson Run in Trelawny, where he was apprehended. He was charged three days later based on a caution statement he gave to the police.