Vincentian coupled jailed in the UK

Xyaire Howard, the 27-year-old Edinboro man who killed Susan Hawkey, a 71-year-old United Kingdom (UK) pensioner and stole £13,000 of her money has been sentenced to life in prison.

Howard’s girlfriend, Chelsea Grant, also a Vincentian from Edinboro, has been sentenced to 15 years for her role in the crime that shock Vincentians and UK residents alike.

However, UK law may see the duo serve only half of their sentences as in England and Wales, a one year prison sentence amounts to six months while the average person who is sentenced to life serves around 15 to 20 years before being paroled.

However, those convicted of exceptionally grave crimes remain behind bars for considerably longer.

Back in October, Howard was found guilty of Hawkey’s murder while Grant was found guilty of three counts of robbery and one count of attempted robbery of Hawkey, but not murder.

They were convicted by a court in the UK and video footage of the duo using Hawkey’s debit card at several stores was released to the chagrin of the public.

Also in October, Howard had pleaded guilty to one of the robberies and admitted in court that he tied Hawkey’s hands to extract her PIN, but maintained she was alive when he left her home.

The victim’s body was found with her hands taped and tied behind her back, her eyes taped shut and a ligature knotted around her neck.

Grant, and Howard, 22, were charged after the badly-decomposing body of the pensioner was discovered in her Neasden, north-west London home bound and gagged. The Vincentian couple lived nearby having migrated to the UK sometime before the murder took place.

The Court also heard that the woman, described as ‘highly vulnerable’, was stripped and murdered in her own home and her life savings diminished from a balance of more than £16,000 to just £3,434.03.

Grant and Howard then went on a £13,000 shopping spree that saw them complete 146 transactions. Both Grant and Howard sent money to St Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG).

Hawley was first robbed on July 27, 2022 and then again on August 22, 2022 when her bag was ripped from her shoulder with enough force to knock her to the ground.

Howard admitted to a charge in relation to robbing the elderly woman on August 22, 2022 while both Vincentians had pleaded guilty to fraud by false representation in relation to their misuse of Hawkey’s bank card.

Other details of the crime read that Hawkey was partially stripped, including the removal of her underwear. She was blindfolded and tied and a ligature placed around her neck.

“For some reason, all of her lower clothing, including underwear, had been removed and her upper clothing had been cut down the front. An item of clothing had been placed over her head and her body concealed under a duvet.

“The ligature around Susan Hawkey’s neck had been tightened with sufficient force to break one of the bones in her neck…,” the Mail Online reported back in October.

Grant recently gave birth to a baby in prison and during the trial turned on Howard, her lover, telling the court that she was not at Hawkey’s home when Howard killed the elderly woman.

She said Howard had at one point asked her to stand outside Hawkey’s house and “sniff” to see if she could smell a dead body. Howard admitted bounding the woman but said he left her alive.

A UK news agency reported that Judge Judy Khan KC described Hawkey as an “incredibly vulnerable woman” who was “stripped and degraded”.

Judge Khan said Howard “terrorized” Hawkey and then strangled her in a “calculated and callous course of action, a killing motivated by greed”.