George Orlando Senior was sentenced on Friday, 3 Oct., to life in prison, with no possibility of parole for 34 years and eight months, for fatally shooting a father in front of his 2-year-old daughter.
A jury had earlier convicted Senior of shooting Divonte ‘Divo’ Hernandez, 25, in the chest at point-blank range in broad daylight in downtown George Town on the morning of 29 Sept. 2023, as his daughter played nearby.
Hernandez’s mother and other relatives, who were in court to hear Justice Cheryll Richards deliver the sentence, described Senior as a “monster” who had deprived their family of a loving father, son and brother.
Senior, 36, who was remanded in Northward Prison, opted not to be present, either in person or via video link, to hear his sentence being passed.
Richards added an extra 56 months to the mandatory minimum 30-year life sentence because of a number of aggravating factors, which included the shooting being carried out in a public place with the victim’s young daughter and a number of other people being present, as well as the premeditated nature of the killing.
‘Stakeout’ prior to ‘chillingly executed’ shooting
The jury had heard during the trial that Senior, wearing a balaclava and gloves, had arrived at the scene – a parking lot at Sound Way, at the junction of Shedden Road and Eastern Avenue – in a rental car with fake licence plates around 10:20am. The car had been rented by Senior’s girlfriend, the court heard, and was found later by police, with the original licence plates restored.
Richards said Senior and his accomplices in the car had been recorded on CCTV driving past the parking lot three times before the fatal shooting was carried out.
“It is not unreasonable to describe this as a stakeout,” the judge said. “It was chillingly executed in mere seconds, using a handgun to shoot Mr. Hernandez in the chest, causing a perforating wound from which death was almost instantaneous,” she said.
Richards added, “It was executed blatantly, without regard for the presence of others, and, apparently, without fear of discovery. It must have been terrifyingly inexplicable to the young child who had just had her chocolate cereal and was engaged in a game of picking up rocks.”
She said the time from which the getaway vehicle arrived at the scene to when it left after the shooting was less than two minutes.
After the shooting, which was described as drug related during the trial, Senior went into hiding and was eventually arrested three weeks later. Senior had admitted he was a drug dealer and that he had met Hernandez and others while dealing drugs, Richards said.
Previous drive-by shooting conviction in Canada
The judge, in arriving at the sentence, also considered the fact that Senior had a previous conviction in Canada, where he had lived for a number of years, for a firearm offence which involved a drive-by shooting.
In a pre-sentencing hearing, the court was told Senior, a Jamaican national, was an overstayer in Cayman at the time of the shooting, with no legal right to reside here.
Richards noted that Senior had been sentenced to two months’ imprisonment and a $1,500 fine for making false representations, for not revealing in work-permit forms in 2017 and 2018 his previous drug- and firearm-related criminal convictions in Canada, and said deportation had been recommended. It was not stated in court when he had been convicted of those false-representation charges.
The judge recommended that, upon completion of his sentence for murder, Senior should be deported from the Cayman Islands.
“On his release,” she said, “it cannot be conducive to the public good to have such an offender remain on the island.”
Mother: ‘Thankful this monster is going to be in prison for a very long time’
The court had heard emotional victim impact statements by Hernandez’s mother and sister, who both lamented the loss of a son, father and brother whom they described as loving and caring.
Mother Denecia Hue sobbed as she sat at the back of the courtroom while the judge read out the sentencing decision.
In her statement, which she had earlier read out in open court, Hue had said Hernandez was the third of her six children, and that his death had broken her heart and traumatised her and her family. She described him as “kind, loving, loyal and generous to all, his siblings, friends, family and the first and last stranger”.
She said he was “crazy in love” with his baby daughter, and that he “adored her and always went above and beyond to make sure her needs were met”.
Hernandez’s sister, Mikayla Hernandez, in her victim impact statement, said her family had been “shattered” by her brother’s death. She said she had last seen him alive a few days before the shooting, when they chatted and laughed, and he had talked about “his plans to work hard and build a better life for his daughter. I remember feeling proud, I saw a man growing, trying and loving deeply.”
She added, “The next time I saw him was at the murder scene, lifeless, lying on the ground. That image is burned into my mind. It haunts me.”
Reacting outside court on Friday to the extended sentence imposed on Senior, Hue told reporters, “I’m just happy. It doesn’t seem fitting, because I don’t know that I’ll ever be happy, with the loss of my son, but I am thankful that this monster is going to be in prison for a very long time, and when he comes out, he will not be amongst us.”
She added, “And, so, this is victory. It’s not the average type of victory, but who feels it, knows it. And so, for us, this is is a win.”
After leaving the court, she said, her next stop would be to visit her son’s grave.
