Robert Fowler, the St Catherine mechanic who was convicted for strangling 20-year-old accounting clerk Khanice Jackson to death in 2021 has been sentenced to life imprisonment with eligibility for parole after he has served 22 years and 11 months.

The decision was handed down by Supreme Court Judge Justice Leighton Pusey in the Home Circuit Division of the Supreme Court  in downtown Kingston on Thursday afternoon.

Jackson, a resident of Independence City in Portmore, St Catherine, vanished on March 24, 2021 after leaving home for work. Her body was found in a ditch on the Dyke Road in St Catherine two days later. Shortly after, Fowler, with whom she had travelled to work at times, was arrested and charged.

Fowler, by his own admission, said on the day in question he had picked up Jackson on Passage Fort Drive in Portmore. He said during the journey they quarreled over a promise he had made three weeks prior to give her money to buy something for her boyfriend’s birthday. He claimed he had defaulted on the pledge because he was under pressure at work and things were hard for him.

He said when the argument continued he turned his car around and told Jackson to take a bus to work. Fowler claimed that he then parked the vehicle along the road to Caymanas, climbed from his seat to the backseat of the car, drew Jackson over and strangled her until he “saw froth coming from her mouth and she had stopped moving”.

He then drove the vehicle with her body to Forum Fishing Village where he bound the hands and feet and left the body in an abandoned building. About 7:30 that same evening he went back for the body, placed it in his vehicle and took it to the Dyke Road where he left it in a ditch. The following morning he took her handbag to the market in Cross Roads, St Andrew where he emptied the contents into a garbage bin.