Former soldier gets life imprisonment for beheading uncle

Dwayne Tappin, a former member of the Guyana Defence Force, was on Monday sentenced to life imprisonment for beheading his uncle.

Tappin, 29, was sentenced by Justice Sandil Kissoon at the Demerara High Court. Last month a 12-member mixed jury had found him guilty of  killing 51-year-old Randolph Seenauth during an argument.  The incident occurred on August 6, 2017, at 125 Better Hope South, East Coast Demerara.

The Jury had ordered that Tappin serves 40 years imprisonment before he could be eligible for parole. 

The State was represented by Prosecutors Mandel Moore and Abigail Gibbs.

According to reports, Seenauth and Tappin lived in separate apartments on the same plot of land. However, the family had a dispute over the land which the victim’s mother had occupied before she died.

On August 6, 2017 around 04:30hrs, neighbours heard a loud commotion in one of the apartments, but then there was silence for a few minutes which led them to suspect something was amiss.

Neighbours called out for Seenauth but got no response and later contacted the Sparendaam Police Station. Police ranks arrived shortly after and upon pushing the front door to Seenauth’s apartment, they found his head lying in a passageway between the living room and kitchen.

Further checks were made in the apartment and the rest of the man’s body was discovered on a mattress in the bedroom.

Tappin, hours after the murder, turned himself over to ranks at the Sparendaam Police Station.