Rommel Akeem Cummins will have to spend at least 36 more years in jail for killing a man on party vessel MV DreamChaser four years ago.
Justice Carlisle Greaves imposed a life sentence on the Vauxhall No. 2, Christ Church resident with a tariff of 40 years in prison before he is eligible for release. However, given that he has already spent 1 355 days on remand, which the judge rounded off to four years, he has been left with a minimum of 36 years behind bars.
Cummins was found guilty last December of fatally shooting 32-year-old Dave Archer, who was working as a private security guard on the party boat, on the night of June 10, 2019.
As he delivered his judgment, a tough-talking Justice Greaves issued yet another warning to perpetrators of gun crimes that “when they do this foolishness, if they survive, their time in jail must be long because the risk is too great to free you early enough that you will continue this mayhem”.
During the trial, the court heard from the lead investigator that Cummins admitted to shooting Archer in his stomach at “point blank” range because the guard was beating three of his friends. According to the evidence, while Cummins was not on the cruise, having left after dropping one of his friends there, he returned dockside with a gun. When the MV DreamChaser docked, he boarded the boat after hearing the DJ urging people to stop fighting, walked up to Archer and shot him.
“You acted as a hitman, an enforcer,” Justice Greaves said as he sentenced Cummins.
“The case has elements of gangism . . . . You knew your men had gone on the cruise, you went to see them get on [and] went back . . . . You took your mother’s motorcycle . . . went and recovered the firearm . . . to go where, to do what? You would ride them on the gun? You going to put them on the bullet and shoot them home? . . . . No, you were going there as the enforcer and as soon as you got the news that one of your men had been in a tussle you walked right on to the people’s boat, barged on to the people’s boat, go right up, first man you see shot him close range. That is aggravating.”
Justice Greaves added: “This is a shooting carried out by him on behalf of or for his cohorts who had been engaged in a . . . tussle on the ship when he was not even present.”
The judge noted that the firearm used was not recovered and the “inference must be that it remains available either for his future use or the use of his cohorts”.
He went on to point out that Barbados and the rest of the region had a “real problem” when it came to murders committed with guns.
“Firearm homicides in these Caribbean communities and in Barbados in particular . . . constitute special cases that I think require a particular approach when it comes to the issue of sentencing. No crime affects these nations and this nation like the scourge of the firearm used to commit murder,” Justice Greaves said.
Comparing statistics in Barbados and some regional countries, including St Lucia, St Kitts, Trinidad, Jamaica, The Bahamas and Guyana, to countries like Japan, China and Singapore, he said the Caribbean region carries a disproportionate murder rate when contrasted with murder rates across the world.
“We have a real problem here, exacerbated by the use of firearms. The reports suggest an average 80 per cent of our murders are committed with the use of a firearm. It is for all of these reasons that given the breadth of criminal offences, we have . . . when murders are committed with the use of the firearm, the sentence is going to be different to that of other types of murders and other offences.
“My view is that where the murder is committed with the use of a firearm, unless there are some special circumstances to the contrary, a convict should expect a sentence that starts with a starting point of life imprisonment,” he said.
The judge said that in Cummins’ case, there were no mitigating factors “of any degree” that should cause the court to fall below that sentence, not even his age. Cummins was 27 years old when he committed the offence.
“His age should not lead to any great reduction . . . . It is not the old men of our community who are murdering the members of our community with firearms. It is not even the middle-aged men who are doing such; it is the young men. Our sentences, therefore, must be structured to deter [them],” Justice Greaves declared.
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