The woman convicted of abducting and killing eight-year-old Danielle Rowe in 2023 shared a meal with the child before cutting her throat and leaving her on the street to die.

That gruesome detail was shared in court on Monday by attorney Pierre Rogers who, in making a plea for leniency for the confessed killer, Dental Assistant Kayodi Satchell, argued that his client’s action shows that “she did not steal the child away with the premeditated intent of doing the child harm” but was in fact making a desperate cry for help.

Rogers made the argument in his plea and mitigation address before Supreme Court Judge Justice Carolyn Tie-Powell in the Home Circuit Division of the Supreme Court in downtown Kingston.

The attorney, while emphasising that there was no justifiable reason for the murder of anyone, especially a child, said the act was triggered when Satchell, who was in “a stormy and unfortunate relationship” with Danielle’s father, was informed by him, via a social media message which simply said, “If yuh know wah good fi yuh, yuh go test yu self fi HIV.”

In arguing that his client had taken the child as “a desperate cry for help”, Rogers said Satchell was disturbed by the callous way in which that disclosure was made, amplified by the fact that she was pregnant. He said his client, because of the situation, had to contend with an aborted second trimester pregnancy.

Rogers said his client, having undergone all that she had, was of the view that it was “a child for a child”.

Satchell, by her own admission, snatched Rowe from Braeton Primary and Infant School in Portmore, Catherine on June 8, 2023 and took her to a location in St Andrew where she fed her a meal before slashing her throat. The mortally wounded child was found by a member of the Jamaica Defence Force on Roosevelt Avenue in St Andrew. She succumbed to her injuries in hospital two days later on June 10.

In September this year Satchell pleaded guilty to the acts which caused widespread horror and outrage.

“That’s what it came down to, his child versus the loss of their child… She now knows that it was wrong, it did not start out as premeditation, but towards the end, after several telephone calls to get attention from the persons she thought were in a position to give her attention; when that failed she descended into a state of frustration and bitterness,” Rogers declared.

The attorney told the court that efforts by his client — who repeatedly contacted the authorities to have her partner prosecuted “for what she thought was a conscious decision, on his part, to move the virus around” — were rebuffed.

He said her state of mind was made worse by the fact that on the day Danielle was taken from the school, she had made numerous calls to the father, his parents, and even an official at his workplace to get their attention about her state but was “ignored”.

“She did not steal the child away with the premeditated intent of doing the child harm; rather, it was a desperate cry for help from her to the father,” Rogers insisted.

“She said she was tired, frustrated,” the attorney said, insisting that Satchell intended no harm to the eight-year-old as “she actually shared a meal with the child before”.

He noted that, while this could not account for the taking of Danielle’s life, the situation was made even “sadder by the loss of her own child’s life”.

“In addition to that, Ma’am, HIV, loss of child, loss of job, place of residence, in one fell swoop, Mi’lady, the heavens crashed, it is perhaps for that reason the doctors and psychiatrists were able to confirm that she suffered what is called an adjustment disorder,” Rogers said.

“We are not hiding behind this, it is clear in my mind that it did not affect her ability to tell right from wrong, what it does do is set out the context within which she was operating. What it does show is that she acted in a manner that was wrong and caused hurt,” the attorney told the court, adding that all the individuals who were close to Satchell have since turned their backs on her.

The attorney, in noting that the judge would be hard-pressed to contemplate any sentence less than life, suggested a starting point “somewhere between 30 and 35 years” with discounts for her guilty plea and remorse and time spent in custody, making it so that she would spend between 27 and 28 years behind bars before eligibility for parole.

On Monday, Satchell — clad in a black top and plaid tiered skirt and slippers, her unprocessed hair neatly braided — was seen dabbing at her eyes and blowing her nose several times during the sentencing exercise.

Supreme Court Judge Justice Carolyn Tie-Powell said she will hand down her decision on December 20.