Resh­ma Ra­goonath

A San­ta Flo­ra man was fined $2,400 af­ter plead­ing guilty to two traf­fic of­fences.

Ronald James Jef­fery was al­most ar­rest­ed, how­ev­er, for fail­ing to at­tend court yes­ter­day. Se­nior Mag­is­trate Ra­jen­dra Ram­bachan, pre­sid­ing over the San Fer­nan­do Traf­fic Court, had mo­ments be­fore is­sued a bench war­rant for James' ar­rest for fail­ure to show up on time for sen­tenc­ing. Jef­fery ar­rived late, claim­ing his tar­di­ness was "due to weath­er con­di­tions." Ram­bachan asked if it was rain­ing and Jef­fery point­ed to his vis­i­bly wet cloth­ing. The mag­is­trate told Jef­fery he had just is­sued a war­rant, but, "I will re­call it." The San­ta Flo­ra res­i­dent was charged by Con­sta­ble Mo­hammed for dri­ving with­out a seat belt and im­prop­er over­tak­ing on South Trunk Road, La Ro­maine, on May 29.

Jef­fery, how­ev­er, claimed that the over­tak­ing was nec­es­sary to avoid a ve­hi­cle dri­ving in front of him. He said the ve­hi­cle was smok­ing bad­ly and he want­ed to get away from that smoke. Jef­fery claimed he un­buck­led his seat belt to look out his win­dow to safe­ly over­take the car. Ram­bachan re­quest­ed po­lice pros­e­cu­tor act­ing Sgt Har­riper­sad Jaikaran to find out from Mo­hammed if there was such a ve­hi­cle. How­ev­er, the pros­e­cu­tor said he was un­suc­cess­ful in get­ting the in­for­ma­tion. The mag­is­trate then or­dered Jef­fery to pay $1,400 or serve three months hard labour in de­fault for dri­ving with­out a seat belt and $1,000 or three months in de­fault for im­prop­er over­tak­ing.

He gave Jef­fery one month to pay the fine for im­prop­er over­tak­ing. Jef­fery was or­dered to pay the seat belt fine forth­with. Ram­bachan said he would dis­qual­i­fy Jef­fery from dri­ving, since the po­lice could not as­sist him with fur­ther in­for­ma­tion.