Victim slams sentence after attack by boyfriend

A woman who almost died after her boyfriend stabbed her has slammed a magistrate’s decision not to jail her attacker.

Tyrone Lawrence Culmer, 43, walked free after pleading guilty to causing grievous harm, an offense that carries a potential penalty of seven years. His victim would have bled to death without emergency surgery that repaired horrific stab wounds to her left thigh.

Culmer attacked the defenseless woman in their apartment at Blue Hill Heights because he got upset because she blocked the TV. He also destroyed her cell phone in a violent rage.

The survivor condemned the slap on the wrist Magistrate Derence Rolle-Davis gave Culmer.

He ordered Culmer to pay the woman less than $1,000 to cover her medical expenses at the state-run hospital and to replace the phone. The magistrate also imposed a restraining order for one year and ordered Culmer to attend anger management classes for six months or face 18 months in prison for non-compliance.

The victim wrote on Facebook, “I was simply shocked at the judge’s ruling. I simply told the judge to mete out the punishment he saw fit for the crime. Apparently almost killing me is not sufficient to put him away.”

“I want his name out there so anyone else who encounters Tyrone L Culmer will walk in the opposite direction.”

The magistrate handed down the ridiculous sentence the day after Alicia Sawyer and her eight-year-old daughter were brutally killed in their Nassau Village home. Police are holding her boyfriend, who has a history of domestic abuse.

Sawyer’s cousin wrote on Facebook, “So the day after my lil cuz was killed by her boyfriend, a judge in this country passed down this kind of sentence?” DPP Garvin Gaskin has remained silent on whether he will challenge the magistrate’s leniency on appeal.

This is the same DPP who took Frank Smith’s bribery acquittal to the Privy Council, wasting millions in tax payers’ dollars, although the prosecution’s key witness was discredited from day one.

We hope that Mr Gaskin shows this same tenacity in protecting other women from a loose canon like Culmer.