Jamaican sex worker pleads guilty to manslaughter

Jamaican woman Tedesha AnnJuliet Hayles has admitted to killing fellow countryman Shockaya Boyd telling the High Court she was not guilty of murder but guilty of manslaughter.

The two sex workers were not on friendly terms as they worked along Bay Street, St Michael on April 28, 2017, Principal Crown Counsel Alliston Seale said as he outlined the facts of the crime in the No. 2 Supreme Court today moments after accepting the plea.

On that Friday, three years ago, a man in a white car, drove up to 26-year-old Hayles along the roadway and requested she accompany him home along with 34-year-old Boyd.

Hayles said ‘no’ as she and Boyd were not on speaking terms. The client went to Boyd and spoke to her before leaving. Moments later Boyd walked over to Hayles quarrelling and a fight started. Hayles pulled a knife and stabbed Boyd several times causing her to fall to the ground. People intervened and rendered assistance while Hayles walked away from the scene onto Jemmotts Lane where she threw the knife onto the compound of the old hospital. Boyd was taken to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital where she succumbed to her injuries.

Hayles was later detained and told police: “Miss, she come up in my face and I had to defend myself.”

She twice declined to contact an attorney-at-law when told of her rights, saying: “I really can’t deal with that now, let me talk to you miss,” speaking to lead investigator Sergeant Heather Pinder. “I don’t want a lawyer now miss.”

In her statement to police, which the sex worker opted to write herself, she revealed that she and the deceased were friends at one point but had a falling out due to a row involving another woman named Chin.

“Chin was troubling me and calling me names and I went and report her to the police station. They went and look for her but did not see her. But we had talk over the matter . . . and I thought the whole thing had stop.”

She told police she did not know the man in the car by name but referred to him as Glasses. The man, she explained, stopped by the stoplights “for both of us” but because they were not speaking to each other ‘I said I am not coming and he must go’. The man, she said, drove on to the corner to the bus stop where he called Boyd and the two had a conversation.

“After she finished talking with him she start cursing me and calling me names and come up in my face,” she wrote in the statement adding that Boyd pushed her and she pushed back before a third woman came and separated them.

“She pulled out of Tash hand and run around Tash and went in her bag for a knife, where I pulled my scissors. She poke at me and skipping and I hold her hand where the knife was . . . and I managed to get the knife from her and poke her three times. Then Tash hold me by my hair and arms and told me to go.”

Hayles said she left the scene with the knife and subsequently threw it away. She boarded a taxi for home but was stopped by police and taken to the police station.

The convicted woman, who is represented by attorney-at-law Sian Lange, held her head down as the prosecutor gave the details of what occurred that night. She however lifted her head and watched as the prosecutor showed photographs of the scene and again when she addressed Justice Worrell.

“Sir I would like to apologise to the court, to Shockaya’s family. I would like also apologise to my family. I would like to apologise for coming in this country and getting in this type of problem and I am asking please if you can find it in your heart to be lenient and have mercy on me because I have never been in trouble such as this type so far, never. I have never even get an arrest in my country and I come into somebody else country and get lock up,” a tearful and very emotional Hayles told Justice Worrell today.

“I am sorry . . . I really am sorry for my actions cause I didn’t just hurt one, I hurt all. But please know that I am not a violent person. I am not a violent person and I am sorry for my actions, I really am sorry for my actions. I would also like to apologise to my son and to my grandmother.”

The confessed killer, from St Elizabeth, Jamaica was first remanded to Dodds prison charged with causing serious bodily harm following an altercation with Boyd. The charge was later upgraded to murder based on the outcome of an autopsy.

That postmortem found that the deceased sustained 14 injuries. Death was due to hemorrhage from a stab wound to the neck.

The convicted woman will reappear in court on January 31, 2020 for sentencing.