A handcuffed Jaleel Frederick entering the courthouse on Wednesday morning. He was sentenced to 16 years in prison for breaking into his ex-girlfriend’s home in the middle of the night and viciously attacking her new boyfriend with a machete.
Jahwara Henry (left) was sentenced on Wednesday morning to 14 years in prison for being an accomplice to attempted murder.
PHILIPSBURG--The Court of First Instance on Wednesday sentenced Jaleel Frederick (29) to sixteen years in prison for breaking into his baby mother’s home in the middle of the night and brutally attacking her new boyfriend with a machete. At the time, Frederick’s one-year-old daughter and the two adults were asleep on the same bed.
The lower court judge also handed down a 14-year prison sentence to Jahwara Henry (28), finding him guilty of being an accomplice to attempted murder and attempted aggravated assault.
The pair were ordered to pay a total of NAf. 66,738 in material and immaterial damages to the two victims.
During the trial earlier this month, Frederick’s lawyer Zylena Bary and Henry’s lawyer Safira Ibrahim had pleaded for their clients’ acquittals on insufficient evidence.
The prosecutor, on the other hand, had demanded 17 years in prison for Frederick and 15 years for Henry.
Bloody attack
The bloody machete attack took place at the ex-girlfriend’s Cole Bay home during the overnight hours of August 17-18, 2023.
The new boyfriend told police that he woke up around 12:30am to the sound of the bedroom door being kicked in, followed shortly after by a man he recognised as Frederick storming into the room.
Frederick started swinging his machete at the boyfriend’s body, and the woman’s hand was cut as collateral damage. She had been asleep next to the male victim, in between him and her and Frederick’s daughter, who was laying on the other side of the bed.
The woman has poor vision and did not have on her glasses. However, she told police that she still knew that the attacker was Frederick, with whom she had been in relationship for several years, because of his body shape, posture and long dreadlocks.
Although the machete cut off a portion of the boyfriend’s left thumb and pinky finger, the man managed to grab the weapon and started to wrestle with Frederick.
It was then that Frederick called for help, and a second machete-wielding attacker entered the room and started swinging. According to the boyfriend, Frederick got loose and joined the other man in chopping his head, chest, neck, back and arms.
Emergency services later rushed the boyfriend to St. Maarten Medical Center (SMMC) in critical condition.
“There was almost no part of his body that had not been stabbed or cut. Needless to say, the injuries could have been fatal,” the prosecutor said during Frederick’s and Henry’s trial earlier this month. “The fact that this man is here today can be called a miracle.”
Convincingly proven
In his verdict, the judge found it legally and convincingly proven that Frederick and Henry had carried out a pre-meditated plan to kill the woman’s new boyfriend.
In addition to both victims immediately pointing the finger at Frederick, surveillance camera footage from the area captured two men climbing over discarded wooden pallets to get into the bush behind the woman’s home about 40 minutes before the attack.
The men were not wearing face masks, and two police officers identified Frederick and Henry as the pair on screen.
The same men were seen returning out of bushes at 12:31am, which was exactly one minute after the ex-girlfriend called 911 and reported that her boyfriend had been chopped up. One man, now wearing a face mask, lost his right slipper on the pile of pallets and hobbled toward a parked Hyundai Accent.
Authorities later recovered the lost slipper, and a DNA test revealed that the blood found on the piece of footwear belonged to the boyfriend.
On Wednesday, the judge ruled that there was no reason to doubt the police’s
identification of Frederick and Henry. In the case of Frederick, the identifying officer had arrested him in February 2022, while the officer who recognised Henry had stopped the defendant during a traffic control only eight days after the attack.
During the pair’s trial earlier this month, Henry told the court that he dropped Frederick at his ex-girlfriend’s house that night because the man wanted to pick up some of his things.
Henry said they went through the bush because it was “a short cut” and confirmed that he was the one who lost his slipper on the camera footage.
However, Henry denied entering the house, saying he was waiting outside when suddenly Frederick and the boyfriend came out of the home fighting. Henry said he only saw a “little bit” of blood and that he did not see Frederick with a machete in his hands.
However, the judge did not believe this story, because the boyfriend’s genetic material was found on the lost slipper and because both victims testified that there was a second attacker.
“Therefore, it can only be that Henry was the second person, besides Frederick, who attacked the male victim,” the judge said in his verdict.
The judge also supported his guilty verdict with the testimony of Frederick’s relative, who told police that Frederick called him that night wanting to be picked up.
The relative said Frederick was “real silent” when he got into the car and asked to be taken to Oyster Pond to wash himself in the sea and throw away his clothes.
“That is when he told me he ‘put it on him’,” the relative told police.
“The Court deduces from this statement that Frederick told the person that he attacked the male victim,” it was stated in the verdict.
The judge also ruled that the pair were guilty of attempted aggravated assault for the ex-girlfriend’s comparatively minor injuries.
“Although the violence was aimed at the male victim, by hacking at him with a machete, the defendants consciously accepted the significant chance that the woman would also sustain severe bodily harm,” it was stated in the verdict. “After all, she was lying on the bed right next to him when the savage attack began.”
Initiator
Describing Frederick as the “initiator” of the crime, the judge gave the 29-year-old a slightly heavier sentence than co-defendant Henry.
The judge also weighed it against Frederick that he has always denied any involvement in the late-night home invasion and brutal machete attack.
“With his actions, Frederick grossly violated the physical integrity of the victims,” the judge said in his verdict. “He apparently did not care that his own minor child would also have had a horrible experience because of this.”
Troubled history
The police database contains no fewer than 25 reports of incidents between Frederick and his ex-girlfriend, who described their previous relationship as “crazy violent”.
According to the prosecutor, the woman had even saved Frederick’s number on her mobile phone under the name, “Diablo”.
Exactly six days before the attack, the boyfriend had filed a police complaint against Frederick because he found the man brandishing a knife and looking through the window.
The woman told police that around this time she also received messages from an unknown number, which she believed came from Frederick.
Her new boyfriend was mentioned by name and one message read, “I would cut your throat with a smile.”
