Hanover man gets nine years for killing his brother

Security guard Edward Crooks, who was arrested for the January killing of his brother, was sentenced to nine years in prison after he pleaded guilty in the Hanover Circuit Court last Friday.

Crooks, of Haddington in Hanover, was charged with murder arising from the stabbing death of his 49-year-old brother, Robert Winston Crooks. He, however, pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of manslaughter when he appeared before High Court Judge Martin Gayle.

Crooks' lawyer, Gillian Haughton, appealed to the judge for leniency on behalf of his client, who had been behind bars for the last nine months, awaiting trial.

In handing down the sentence, the judge told Edward Crooks that he had committed a very serious offence, but his guilty plea factored in him getting only a nine-year sentence.

According to reports, shortly after 10:30 p.m. on Thursday, January 4, Edward Crooks made a report at the Sandy Bay Police Station that he had returned home from work to find his brother, with whom he shared a house, lying in a pool of blood on the floor of the house, dead.

When the police accompanied Edward Crooks to his house, they found his brother on the floor of the two-apartment board house with multiple stab wounds to the upper body. Edward Crooks told the police that prior to him leaving for work, he overheard a quarrel between his brother and his girlfriend.

However, when the girlfriend was picked up, she not only pleaded her innocence, but provided crucial information to the police, implicating Edward Crooks in the killing. He was subsequently arrested and charged.