Jensen La Vende

An Arou­ca bar own­er, who is ac­cused of as­sault­ing a woman by kick­ing her in the head re­peat­ed­ly and strik­ing her with a met­al ob­ject, was cart­ed off to jail last night hours af­ter ap­pear­ing in court on three crim­i­nal charges.

Ri­car­do Jerome, 36, of First Av­enue, Orop­une Gar­dens, Pi­ar­co, who has al­so been em­ployed as a labour­er at the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion for the last sev­en years, was un­able to have his bail processed as he ap­peared in court short­ly af­ter 4 pm.With to­day be­ing the pub­lic hol­i­day of Di­vali it is un­like­ly his bail can be processed in prison, sources said.

On his way to court, Jerome was taunt­ed and threat­ened by women, one even lung­ing and pulling at him as po­lice of­fi­cers es­cort­ed him in­to the court­room.Jerome stood be­fore mag­is­trate Deb­bie-Ann Bas­saw, charged with un­law­ful­ly beat­ing the moth­er of his child, with his hands clasped in front of him and his head bowed. A half-eat­en pack of bis­cuits pro­trud­ed from his front left pock­et.

Jerome sur­ren­dered to po­lice last Fri­day af­ter a video be­gan cir­cu­lat­ing on Face­book, show­ing a vi­cious as­sault of a woman, iden­ti­fied in court yes­ter­day as Or­nel­la Marchan, at Nel­la's Sports Bar, Ari­ma Old Road.The al­leged in­ci­dent took place on No­vem­ber 5.He plead­ed not guilty to the of­fence as well as be­ing in pos­ses­sion of a weapon, which po­lice said was used in the al­leged at­tack, and dis­or­der­ly con­duct.

Jerome was brought to court just af­ter 4 pm through the pub­lic en­trance of the court­room. Those who had gath­ered to see him left as the rains be­gan to fall. In­side the court­room his moth­er sat along with the me­dia lis­ten­ing to the pre­sen­ta­tion of his case.

The mag­is­trate was in­formed that Jerome had two pre­vi­ous charges of as­sault and charges of pos­ses­sion of am­mu­ni­tion and a firearm. That mat­ter, he claimed, had been dealt with but with­out his crim­i­nal record or a court ex­tract, his claim could not be ver­i­fied.

Jerome was grant­ed $60,000 bail to be ap­proved by a Clerk of the Peace. He was told if his crim­i­nal record proved to be un­true his bail would be al­tered and in­creased. If it turned out to be ac­cu­rate, then he may get a re­duc­tion in his bail.

Through his at­tor­ney, Fa­reed Ali, the pris­on­er agreed to re­turn to court on Fri­day when his crim­i­nal record would be made avail­able.As a con­di­tion of his bail, Jerome was or­dered to stay away from Marchan, who the court learnt had been liv­ing at the home of Jerome's moth­er.

Ali as­sured that his client had every in­ten­tion of stay­ing away from the 35-year-old woman and would com­ply with the court's or­der.

Since his court ap­pear­ance took place be­yond the nor­mal work­ing hours of the court, Jerome was un­able to ac­cess his bail and was re­mand­ed to the Gold­en Grove Prison. His at­tor­ney said he in­tend­ed to write to the Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons Ster­ling Stew­art re­quest­ing his client to be kept away from the gen­er­al prison pop­u­la­tion so that he would not be harmed.

Hours be­fore his court ap­pear­ance, a group of men and women sat out­side the Ari­ma Mag­is­trates' Court wait­ing to catch a glimpse, some of whom de­scribed him as "a re­al cool man."Some of women, while tak­ing sips of al­co­hol, crit­i­cised Marchan for giv­ing a state­ment to po­lice, while some men said there were two sides to a sto­ry and all had not been told.

One women re­called her hor­rors at be­ing a vic­tim of do­mes­tic abuse and how she worked up the courage to leave the re­la­tion­ship.An­oth­er said she would nev­er be in such a re­la­tion­ship and if any man dare touch her she would "bathe him with hot oil af­ter some good lov­ing and he sleep­ing."