By Jenny Morrison & Julie-Anne Barnes From Daily Record

Isabella Hellmann’s parents will travel to Scotland to see their granddaughter for the first time after the tragedy.

The parents of a woman left to drown in the Caribbean by her husband will travel to Scotland to see their granddaughter for the first time since the tragedy.

Eduardo and Elizabeth Rodriguez will fly to Edinburgh next month to be reunited with two-year-old Emelia after a judge delayed sentencing Lewis Bennett over the killing of his wife Isabella.

Bennett, 41, is facing up to eight years in prison after he pleaded guilty to the involuntary manslaughter of Colombian-born Isabella.

She disappeared when the couple’s 37ft catamaran sank off the Bahamas in May 2017.

The coastguard picked Bennett up on a liferaft hours later with stolen gold coins worth thousands of pounds.

Bennett’s family pleaded with the judge for a lenient sentence for the sake of his daughter.

She is being cared for by Bennett’s parents Tom and Sheila along with his sister Claire in Edinburgh’s Leith area.

US District Judge Federico Moreno has postponed sentencing Bennett, originally from Poole, Dorset, in Miami until May.

He claims he wants to see how the two families co-operate over access to Emelia before jailing Bennett.

The toddler was taken to the UK within days of the search for her mum being called off.

The only contact since then had been via video calls.

The Rodriguez family lawyer, Mitchell Kitroser, based at North Palm Beach in Florida said: “The facts of this case are very sad.

“The person who has done nothing wrong here is Emelia. The judge deferred sentencing until the end of May because he wants to see some level of co-operation before then.

“He wants to see an in-person visit from Isabella’s family.

“The family are hoping to get to Scotland in March. And they hope it will be the beginning of regular visits.

“When Lewis was asked, he said in court he wanted Isabella”s family to have contact, so one of the reasons for the postponement is for that to happen.

“Isabella’s family’s love for Emelia will outstrip the cost of having to travel Transatlantic.”

Kitroser also admitted Bennett is likely to return to Scotland when he is released. He said: “I would imagine he would be back. There’s nothing for him here.

“We’ve got two families who have all the reason in the world to distrust each other.

“But at this point, the concern is how are you going to get these families to co-operate.

“The right thing to do is to make sure when Emelia is old enough, she will see her dad stood up in court and took responsibility and that he didn’t take her mother’s family away from her.”

Bennett’s parents left their home in Wimborne, Dorset, and moved to Scotland to be closer to their daughter Claire.

His dad Tom said: “We just want this to be over, although of course it will never be over really, not for Lewis and not for any of us.

“We’re looking after our granddaughter, or at least we’re sharing looking after her with our daughter. She’s too young to understand what is going on. We can’t believe this story has gone all around the world like this.”

For more on this story go to: https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/caribbean-sea-death-family-fly-14009397