The mother of 20-year-old D’Jonnay Graham, who was shot dead by her police lover in June 2025, has expressed displeasure that he was sentenced for manslaughter, insisting that her beloved daughter was murdered.
The victim’s mother, Euon Douglas Graham, was hoping that Constable Patrick Walters would have been sentenced to life imprisonment.
“We not pleased and that’s not fair. That’s not manslaughter; that’s murder,” Graham told reporters outside the Supreme Court on Friday.
Walters, 24, was sentenced to 22 years and six months in prison for manslaughter by Justice Tara Carr. He was also sentenced to 20 years and three months for using a firearm to commit a felony. The sentences are to run concurrently.
Walters had initially been charged with murder but pleaded guilty to manslaughter in the St Mary Circuit Court.
He was charged in connection with the June 25, 2025 shooting death of the assistant teacher at her home in Richmond, St Mary.
Graham said she had travelled from St Mary hoping to hear a sentence of at least 35 years before parole.
At the same time, she said: “Even if dem give him life, it nah go bring back my daughter, who mi cherish.”
According to the facts before the court, Walters was at Graham’s home about 9:15 p.m. on the day, when a dispute developed between him and D’Jonnay, during which she was shot.
Walters had reportedly shot himself in the head during the incident and was taken to the Port Maria Hospital along with D’Jonnay. However, D’Jonnay succumbed to her injuries.
According to the distraught mother, the dispute was over a phone call her daughter had received.
She rejected Walters’ account that her daughter had been fighting him for his firearm.
“D’Jonnay never did a fight him fi a gun,” she said. “And even if she a fight you, why you shoot her so much time?”
She also rejected Walter’s claim that he was remorseful, saying she would believe him if he had been honest about the incident, as her daughter never reached for his gun.
“You say she’s trying to take the gun from you. You shoot her in her face.
“You hold her at close range. You shoot off her finger. You shoot off her ears. You shoot her in her leg, but the gun go off?” the mother questioned.
PAINFUL TESTIMONY
Graham said the account that D’Jonnay had been fighting for the firearm was particularly painful for her.
“The part that he said D’Jonnay was fighting for the gun and it go off, it even draw mi tears,” she said. “Mi lost. Lost. Lost.”
Graham said Walters had been treated as a member of the family and that she had regarded him as a son.
“You leave and come to our home, home where we work hard and build, and you murder my daughter on the veranda,” she said.
She described the relationship between Walters and D’Jonnay as loving and said the killing had devastated the family.
“It destroyed the whole entire family,” Graham said, describing D’Jonnay as “loving, caring and harmless”.
She recalled the close relationship she shared with her daughter, saying there were countless things she misses about her.
“Every single thing,” she said.
“My daughter is somebody who drive me from one end to another. If I’m going overseas, she’d bring me to the airport,” she said.
Asked whether she would forgive Walters, Graham said she was not prepared to do so and that God would have to lead her in that direction.
“No, because I don’t give forgiveness. God will give forgiveness,” she said.
Graham, who described herself as a Christian and a member of the Shiloh congregation, said she was relying on her faith to help her through the grief.
“Right now, I’m hurting from inside and out. But God will work on that,” she said. “Mi not going to come here and say mi forgive him. It’s just one year. Forgive him? What?”
In the meantime, she acknowledged that she had to accept the court’s decision, despite her disappointment.
“I just have to work with it,” she said. “And take me my own little time and heal.”
The Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions ruled on July 17, 2025 that Walters should be charged with murder and using a firearm to commit a felony after investigators probed the circumstances surrounding D’Jonnay’s death.
The Crown was represented by Assistant Director of Public Prosecutions Alice-Ann Gabbidon, while attorney-at-law Donahue Martin represented Walters.
tanesha.mundle@gleanerjm.com
