The Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (ODPP) is to seek the death penalty against Omar Green, the construction worker charged with the murder and rape of his nine-year-old stepdaughter Nikita Noel in Hanover last month.

Green had the notice served on him when he appeared in the Hanover Circuit Court on Tuesday.

The 42-year-old accused man, of a Barbary Hill, Lucea address, has been granted legal aid and assigned an attorney-at-law, Albert Morgan, according to DPP Paula Llewellyn in a news release.

READ: Stepfather of 9-y-o Nikita Noel charged with rape, murder

The matter has been set for mention on Monday, July 3, 2023 in the Hanover Circuit Court, for the file to be completed, a psychiatric evaluation report to be submitted, and disclosure to be made of all the material to the defence, the DPP said.

Green had been in an intimate relationship with Nikita’s mother.

The incident is alleged to have occurred in the afternoon of February 1, 2023. Earlier that morning the accused and the mother of the deceased had allegedly had a domestic dispute.

Nikita, who family members fondly called Joanna, was a student at Esher Primary.

On the alleged day of the incident, she reportedly travelled from school with her usual taxi driver, before she and other passengers exited the cab at the usual spot, the foot of a dirt road leading up a hill to where her family lives.

The child’s mother raised an alarm after she did not return home and could not be found. Community members and the police launched a search and her body was found a few feet from the entrance to her house.