SOUTH CAROLINA: A man convicted of killing two elderly Indian-American motel workers in 2015, has received a double life sentence without the possibility of parole. Joshua Poacher, 22, who was convicted by a jury for murdering Hansaben and Kantibhai Patel, at the Best Western motel in Point South, South Carolina, on August 16, 2015, was also sentenced to 30 years in prison for armed robbery and five years for having a deadly weapon.
The jury is reported to have deliberated for just 45 minutes on April 12, before finding Poacher guilty of the double murders. Before the verdict was delivered, Circuit Court Judge Lawton McIntosh told the court he “would sleep on it” before handing down Poacher's sentence. Prosecutor Duffie Stone of the Fourteenth Circuit Solicitor’s Office asked for a life sentence in the heinous case. He heard from the convict's relatives who said he was a good man who had made a terrible mistake. Poacher himself addressed the court in tears, apologising to the victim's family. “I know what I did was wrong,” he said. “My intention wasn't to go in there and kill those people. I just fired 'cause I got scared.”
He said he was walking to a local restaurant to get something to eat when he saw the Patels on the second-floor balcony of the motel. He asked them if they had a light, and Kantibhai invited him up. Poacher said he went into the couple's room, and when Kantibhai saw his gun, he started to push him and grabbed him. “I grabbed the gun and just turned around and fired,” he said in the video. He said he had no criminal intent when he entered the motel, also confessing he had a drug problem and was likely coming off a high.
The Patels' murder was called a “cold-blooded execution” by Prosecutor Stone. “They were cowering in the back of their own home when they were shot and killed by the defendant.” Releasing a press release after the sentencing, Stone said, “Mrs Patel was bending over her dead husband when Poacher shot her in the back. Mr Poacher is exactly where he needs to be. Mr and Mrs Patel were truly innocent people. They were getting ready for work when they were gunned down. They hadn't even had time to put on their shoes.” He added, “To me, the way he killed her is inexcusable. I can't fathom anything worse than that.”
