Lauren Aguillera was yesterday sentenced to 18 years hard labour for the 2005 felony murder of Erin fisherman Ronald King, who was beaten, tied up and thrown overboard during a robbery at sea.
Aguillera was sentenced by Justice Maria Wilson in the San Fernando Third Assizes. The felony murder rule applies when someone is killed during the commission of an arrestable offence, but the intention was not to kill them.
Aguillera was indicted along with another man for the murder of King, aka ‘Juk yuh waist,’ 48, sometime between May 23 and June 5, 2005.
In passing down the sentence yesterday, Wilson said Aguillera had been trying to turn his life around by participating in numerous educational programmes at the Maximum Security Prison in Arouca.
She said on May 23, King went out to sea to fish in the boat, Unbelievable. The boat had a fishing net and an engine in it at the time. The owner of the boat, Martin Jones, and another man, Martin Joseph, also went out to sea. They saw King in the boat further out to sea than they were.
Around 10.30 pm, Jones and Joseph returned to shore but did not see King. A party of men went out to try to find him and they saw the boat halfway in the water with the engine, icebox and net missing. King was not in the boat. A report was made to the Erin Police Station and Sgt Roopnarinesingh organised more searches for King’s body.
Earlier that same day, Aguillera and the other man were about to set out to sea from Moruga, when a woman named Tasha Smith asked them if she could go with them to fish. They agreed and after several hours at sea, the trio went to shore in Erin and went into a bar. Later that night, the men left Smith at the bar and went back into the boat.
In his confession, Aguillera said the other man told him Smith could not go with them on their “mission.”
Aguillera said he asked what mission and the man told him there was a single man out at sea in a boat and he needed an engine. Aguillera also admitted that he hit King twice with a piece of wood and assisted the other man in throwing him overboard after tying his hands and feet with rope.
King’s body was found in June by two beachgoers on a beach in La Brea.
His sentence was back-dated to begin on April 26, 2016, when he pleaded guilty to the crime.