Child-killer sentenced to life in prison plus 30 yrs

St. Thomas, USVI – FAMILY members of 12-year-old Laquina Hennis experienced a sense of justice when the man who confessed to strangling the defenseless child on Good Friday last year was sentenced to life imprisonment on Thursday (Aug 21).

V.I. Superior Court judge Brenda Hollar imposed the life sentence on 31-year-old Daniel Castillo after he was found guilty of voluntary manslaughter and slapped on another 30-year sentence for the aggravated child abuse conviction.

According to statements he gave to federal marshals and police, Castillo had persuaded the young girl, with whom he was acquainted, to accompany him to an abandoned house where he was living to collect some items for her uncle. Once there, he recounted, the girl hit him after he had insulted her mother and he had strangled her.

Castillo had gone on the lam while police and Laquina’s distraught family and friends searched for the missing girl in the Oswald Harris Court housing community where the family resided. It was persons living next to Castillo’s abode on Eighth Street who smelled a stench coming from the place and alerted authorities who then discovered the girl’s rotting body stuffed into a tub.

Assistant Attorney General Jesse Bethel had made a motion for Castillo’s prior convictions to be considered under the territory's habitual offenders law in order to have the sentencing enhanced from a 10 year maximum term to life imprisonment. He said he could not fathom a more monstrous crime than killing a child.  ~~Adz:Right~~

Castillo’s rap sheet showed that he had been convicted of third-degree assault for repeatedly raping a mentally retarded woman at gunpoint in 2004.

Additionally, there was a misdemeanor case pending at the time he murdered the 12-year-old, in which he had pleaded guilty to attacking and injuring the mother of his children.

Before handing down her sentence, Judge Hollar noted that Castillo has a history of crimes against females and said he used his position as a friend of Laquina’s family to lure the girl to a violent death.

She apparently rejected the defense attorney Chief Public Defender Harold Willocks’ argument that Castillo had had a hard life and could be rehabilitated. Willocks registered his intent to file an appeal.

Beatrice Hennis, Laquina's mother, did not speak at the trial but said afterwards that she was satisfied with the outcome of the case and that the family could now “sleep in peace”.