The dying declaration of 36-year-old Kevin Thomas, manager of Rivoli Football Club in Spanish Town, St Catherine, has placed the man who fatally shot him behind bars for the next 25 years.

Ziggy Mills, labourer of Salt Pond Road, Spanish Town, who was reported to be a member of the Clansman Gang, was convicted of the murder and sentenced last week to life imprisonment.

Justice Donald McIntosh, in sentencing Mills, ordered that he should serve 25 years before he is eligible for parole.

A Home Circuit Court jury retired for more than an hour before returning the guilty verdict.

Thomas, who was also called 'Keegan', was shot and stabbed on October 6, 2005. Shortly before he died that same day at the Spanish Town Hospital, he told the police that it was "Ziggy from de la Vega City" who shot him.

He also told a policewoman, who was at the hospital, that he knew Mills and told her who Mills' mother was and where she lived.

The Crown relied on the dying declaration which Thomas gave to the police, naming the man whom he said shot him, to prove its case against Mills.

The medical evidence was that all three injuries were fatal.

Mills, in his defence, denied having anything to do with the murder.