HAUGHTON COURT, Hanover — Omar Green, who was on Monday sentenced to life in prison for raping and using his hands to strangle to death nine-year-old Nikita Noel, has a chequered past that includes gun charges, allegedly threatening to kill Nikita’s mother, Nordia Edwards, and slashing the tyres of another girlfriend vehicle.

Edwards, who asked that the case against Green be discontinued after he threatened her life, told the Jamaica Observer that she had paid Green’s legal fees for the last of two gun charges he faced. He was not convicted of either charge. She had no idea, then, that he would one day take the life of her child.

As he had done at his appearance in the Hanover Circuit Court last Thursday, Green on Monday begged Nikita’s family to forgive him for what he had done. When he was given life in prison, Edwards breathed a sigh of relief. Later in the evening, she expressed satisfaction with the sentence handed down to Green.

“It is not going to bring back my daughter’s life, but at least he will not be on the street to do something to another child,” she told the Observer.

She repeated a call she’d made in the past for the return of the death penalty.

“I need the Government to change the law because if the Government changes the law, the death penalty would not be off the table,” argued Edwards.

With his sentences running concurrently, 42-year-old Green is not eligible for parole until he has served 50 years and seven months.

The sentence was handed down by Justice Courtney Daye.

Green was convicted based on strong DNA evidence that linked him to, or could not rule out his involvement in, the child’s rape and murder. For the rape charge, parole is only possible after he has served 43 years and seven months. For the murder conviction he is eligible for parole after serving 50 years and seven months. For concurrent sentences, the longer term applies.

Green, who is from Barbary Hill in Lucea, was spared the death penalty because he pleaded guilty at the first opportunity to do so after the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions served notice that he would be sentenced to death.

Nikita, who family members fondly called Joanna, was a student of Esher Primary School at the time of her death. She was killed on the afternoon of February 1, 2023. Earlier that morning Green and the child’s mother — with whom he was involved in a romantic relationship — had allegedly engaged in a domestic dispute.

Police reported that little Nikita travelled from school with her usual taxi driver before she and other passengers exited the cab at the usual spot, the beginning of a dirt road leading up a hill to where her family lives.

Edwards raised an alarm after her child did not return to their house and could not be found. Community members and the police launched a search and Nikita’s body was found in bushes a few feet from the entrance to her house.

The family dog was also found with both rear legs bound by a shirt.