Wife jailed for death of husband in Dominican Republic to appeal 12 year sentence

Nicola Reyes claims his death was a tragic accident

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A woman jailed in the Dominican Republic for 12 years for killing her husband in a road crash is planning to appeal after claiming it was a tragic accident.

Nicola Reyes, 37, from Cardiff, says that she knocked her husband Jorge from his motorbike as he rode alongside her car when she swerved to avoid some people during a night out in July 2012.

She has said that they did not have a perfect relationship and that they had argued on the night of the accident over money as she prepared to return to Wales to work for three months.

But she told the BBC she was horrified when she was convicted of killing her husband and claims she is the victim of a miscarriage of justice. Reyes, who was convicted of voluntary manslaughter, said: “I cannot be punished for something I did not do.”

Reyes, a mother-of-two, moved to the Caribbean in 2004 with her children and parents and met handyman Jorge when he helped out at their home. She found work as a rep with a holiday travel company. Her parents moved back home with her children in 2007 but she stayed on with her husband.

She told the BBC the hardest part was telling her daughter she was not going home and having to listen to her cry.

“I would never put my family through all of this, and the publicity and the media and everything, should I have thought ‘oh yeah I’m going to kill my husband’ and I killed him, because I would know that I have to be punished.

“But I cannot be punished for something that I did not do,” she said.