Socialite Jasmine Hartin is fined £30k but avoids jail after pleading guilty to shooting cop pal dead in Belize court
SOCIALITE Jasmine Hartin was fined £30,000 but avoided jail time after admitting she shot her cop pal to death.
The 33-year-old earlier pleaded guilty to killing Belizean police superintendent Henry Jemmott in May 2021.
Hartin initially denied responsibility over the death of Jemmott but has since entered a plea of manslaughter by negligence at Belize’s Supreme Court.
And on Tuesday evening, Judge Ricardo Sandcroft ordered the ex-daughter-in-law of British-Belizean billionaire Lord Ashcroft to pay a £30,000 fine
The court also handed her 300 hours' community service.
Hartin must additionally record a video educating others about the ramifications of "drinking and making foolish decisions".
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Jemmott was shot to death while he and Hartin were drinking together late at night on a pier in 2021.
The horrific ordeal unfolded on the island of Ambergris Caye, Belize's largest island that known for its pristine Caribbean beaches.
Hartin previously claimed the cop's death was a "horrible accident".
She alleged Jemmott had offered to teach her how to use his Glock-17 pistol for her protection, the court heard.
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The Canadian socialite sobbed as she entered the guilty plea to manslaughter by negligence at the last-minute before her trial was due to take place.
Last week, the court heard a precedent in Belizean law allows a defendant who enters a guilty plea at this stage of a case to avoid jail - and instead pay a fine.
A civil case is set to go before the courts in Belize at the conclusion of criminal proceedings against Hartin.
GRUESOME SCENE
At the time of the shooting, Belizean police officers rushed to the sound of gunfire, where they found Hartin drenched in blood near the beachfront home she shared with her partner Andrew Ashcroft.
found Jemmott’s lifeless body floating in the water off San Pedro with a single gunshot wound to the head.
Hartin told authorities that she was giving the superintendent a shoulder massage when he asked her to hand him his pistol, reported at the time.
She then alleged that the Glock service pistol accidentally went off and shot him in the back of the head.
Hartin claimed Jemmott then fell on her, and she pushed him off, leading to his lifeless body falling from the pier to the water.
In the aftermath of the shooting, rumors about Hartin and Jemmott ramped up.
However, Jemmott's sister, Marie Jemmott Tzul, told the that her brother knew Hartin but that there was no romantic relationship between the two.
Instead, Jemmott Tzul told the outlet that her brother was shot while "drinking with Lord Ashcroft's daughter-in-law (and) had a head wound like an assassination."
Hartin broke her silence over a year after the incident in an interview with CBS' in July 2022.
"It was such a blur. Umm, you know, and I think I was in shock," the mother-of-two told Sant.
On the night of the shooting, Hartin said she and Jemmott had been drinking before going to the pier, where she'd given him a shoulder massage.
She said he tried teaching her how to load and unload the magazine and bullets from his Glock 17 service pistol.
"I'm holding it like this on the top and like this, and I'm trying to get the magazine out," Hartin told the outlet, demonstrating the way she says she'd held Jemmott's pistol.
"Next thing I know, the gun went off."
When asked if she had her finger around the trigger, Hartin replied: "Not that I thought.
"I'd — I'm—I don't know. I — I — I mean, it was an accident , or the gun misfired. But consciously, did I pull the trigger? No." she added.
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“There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t think about Henry, he was my friend, he was a protector," Hartin told the Mail.
Hartin was previously in a common-law marriage with Lord Ashcroft's son Andrew and shares six-year-old twins with him, but they have since separated and are currently locked in a custody battle.