Suspect acquitted of involvement in Medical School student’s death

The 32-year-old man from Bosnia and Herzegovina suspected of involvement in the death of Saba University School of Medicine’s student Kavya Guda on April 15, 2015, was acquitted of homicide by the Court of First Instance in Bonaire on Friday. S.C., who was residing in Missouri, United States, was convicted of possession of a large amount of child pornography, for which he was sentenced to a prison sentence of twelve months.

On November 24, the Prosecutor’s Office demanded a prison sentence of three years as it considered S.C. guilty of culpable homicide, but demanded acquittal for murder, manslaughter and rape.
The Prosecutor also called upon the Court to declare the Prosecutor’s Office inadmissible in its case where it concerned charges of threats.
The Judge only found the child-porn charges proven as the defendant had no fewer than 706 pornographic images of sometimes very young children on his laptop computer.
S.C. was extradited from the United States, where he was residing, to Bonaire on January 15, 2017. He was extradited to Bonaire at the Prosecutor’s Office’s request. The petition for his extradition was filed in August 2016. Three months later, a court of law in the United States considered the extradition permissible.
Based on the statements provided by the suspect and witnesses and on technical and forensic investigations the Judge in the Court of First Instance tried to reconstruct the final hours in the victim’s life.
Her lifeless and partially undressed body was found on her bed in her apartment on Clement Sorton Street in The Bottom on April 15, 2015. The woman’s arms were tied behind her back.
DNA investigations revealed that before her death the woman had had sex with two men: her friend and the defendant. The suspect claimed he had a secret sexual relationship with the victim, but this statement was not sustained by any witnesses.
An autopsy carried out on the victim’s body revealed that the woman was killed by strangulation. No traces of burglary or theft were found in her apartment.
The suspect confessed he had been at the victim’s apartment on April 14, 2015, but lied about the exact times of his visits, the Court said.
The pathologist could not provide an exact time of death and said that Kavya passed away no later than April 15, 2015, at 2:00am.
The Judge said in the verdict that it could not be ascertained whether the suspect and the victim had had consensual sex or not.
The Court said there were different scenarios. It was “very well possible” that the suspect raped the victim and killed her afterward. But it could also not be excluded that the suspect had had some form of (voluntary or involuntary) erotic asphyxiation play which had ran out of hand, as a result of which the woman had “inadvertently and unintentionally” lost her life.
“But it cannot be excluded either that the suspect had had (voluntary or involuntary) intercourse with the victim or left, after which another person took the victim’s life,” the Court stated in the verdict.
Based on the facts and circumstances of this case the Court could not establish “beyond any reasonable doubt” that the defendant had been involved in rape or homicide.
The defendant, however, was found guilty of the possession of child-pornographic material, which was found on a laptop computer confiscated by the Caribbean Netherlands Police Force on May 5, 2015.
The suspect also denied this allegation and claimed that malware had downloaded the images on his laptop.
Information-Technology experts, however, did not find any viruses or malware on the defendant’s laptop. The Court, therefore, found it proven that the user of the laptop had been the one who had stored the images on the hard disc. In total, 9,500 images were found.

The Daily Herald.