(Kaieteur News) – Sixty-six-year-old Alan Sim formerly of Paradise, East Coast Demerara was on Thursday sentenced to 35 years’ imprisonment for the 2015 murder of his former partner, Melissa Skeete.

Sim was sentenced by Justice Sandil Kissoon at the Demerara High Court. Skeete, a 32-year-old dispatcher attached to the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC) was stabbed several times about her body on 23rd November, 2015. Sim had showed up at the woman’s workplace in his motorcar and picked her up. He later stabbed her several times. Skeete died while receiving treatment at the GPHC.

In 2020, a mixed 12-member jury that found him guilty of the offence and he was sentenced to 60 years’ imprisonment by Justice Navindra Singh. However, that conviction was vacated by the Court of Appeal and a retrial was ordered. At the beginning of the retrial, Sim entered a plea of not guilty to murdering Skeete but was later found guilty by a jury of his peers.