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March 6, 20190By SLT Staff

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WRAL News: A jury on Monday decided to impose the death sentence on Saint Lucian born Seaga Edward Gillard, convicted of killing two people in 2016 at a motel in North Carolina, USA.Police on Dec. 3, 2016, charged Seaga Edward Gillard, 29, and Brandon Xavier Hill, 30, with first-degree murder for the shooting deaths of April Lynn Holland and Dwayne Garvey.

Investigators said Gillard and Hill shot Holland and Garvey to death on Dec. 2, in a room at America’s Best Value Inn off Blue Ridge Road near Crabtree Valley Mall.According to the newsobserver.com, defense attorneys brought evidence describing Gillard’s “poverty-stricken childhood in St. Lucia, where he was raised largely by siblings only a few years older. Food was scarce, and Gillard was once sent home from school for lacking socks — a dress-code violation.”The unanimous decision came about two hours after the jury resumed deliberations Monday morning.Gillard did not show any emotion as the jury’s decision was read.The death penalty sentence is the first by a Wake County jury in over a decade.The jury began its deliberations around 2:30 p.m. Friday afternoon in the punishment phase of the trial after nearly 90 minutes of instructions from Wake County Superior Court Judge Paul Ridgeway.Gillard, 30, was convicted two weeks ago by the same jury of several charges, including two counts of first-degree murder, attempted robbery with a firearm and attempted first-degree rape.Security cameras at the motel near Crabtree Valley Mall captured the deaths of Holland and Garvey. During the first phase of the trial, jurors saw the grisly black-and-white footage in which Gillard opened fire on Garvey inside a motel hallway.