High Court Judge, Aiah Simeon Allieu has sentenced Christiana Monikor to five years imprisonment after she was found guilty of murdering her husband, Moses Koroma at Waterloo, outside of Freetown.

The sentence includes time spent at the Correctional Centre while the trial was going on, according to Justice Allieu, after listening to the plea of litigation on Thursday 15th September.

Defense lawyer Harold Momoh in his mitigation plea asked the judge to temper justice with mercy and take into consideration that Monikor was a suckling mother.

It was alleged that on Thursday 19th December 2019 at No. 4 John Street, Off Old Road, Kamajor Bridge, Waterloo, Monikor killed Koroma.

The matter was committed to the High Court for trial, and the convict pleaded guilty following an amendment to the indictment that was reduced to a charge of Manslaughter.

The prosecution led by Phidratu Hastings-Spaine, brought in four witnesses including a Consultant Pathologist, Dr. Simeon Owiss Koroma, who confirmed the death as a result of a stab wound to the left side of his chest of Koroma.

Edward M. Anderson was the first prosecuting witness to arrive at the scene, followed by Joshua Karim Conteh, a detective Police Constable, attached to the Criminal Investigations Department at the Waterloo Police Station, and the Investigating Officer who was sent to the scene of the crime along with other police officers.

Lawyer Hastings-Spaine also led in evidence her key witness, Osman Fullah, who was the landlord of Koroma and lived at the same compound.

Fullah recalled that on the 19th of December 2019, he was praying when his daughter, Hawa, alerted him that the deceased and the convict were fighting and he left for their apartment.

He said when he got there, he met Christiana holding on to her husband and he separated them by moving him from inside the apartment to the veranda.

He said Christiana still came out, grabbed Koroma, and forced him back into the house but this time he (Fullah) did not follow them inside, so he didn’t see her stab Koroma.

Very shortly after that, Fullah added that the deceased came out and exclaimed that Christiana had stabbed him. He (Fullah) said he checked the deceased and noticed that he was bleeding profusely from the left side of his chest and he tied a cloth around the wound to stop the bleeding.

He stressed that the knife in question was never found and tendered in evidence, but Christiana in her statement to the police admitted that she “saw a knife” which she took away from the deceased who was threatening to kill her with it, although the police denied that Christiana had said so in her statement.

Edward M. Anderson who first reported the matter to the police after arriving at the scene also confirmed seeing ‘blood all over the body of the deceased as he lay on the ground.

Pathologist Koroma, conducted a post-mortem on 3rd December 2019 and concluded that the victim did not die naturally, but from a stab wound to the chest that caused excessive bleeding.

At the close of the prosecution’s case, the convict in her defence claimed it was her husband who attacked her and threatened to kill her with a knife he was holding, which she managed to remove from him.

Christiana said as they struggled over the knife, she could not tell how the deceased was fatally wounded because her back was turned away from Koroma who was desperately trying to take the knife.