Sascha Wil­son

A Debe man, who chopped his friend on the head be­cause he told him to stop curs­ing, was jailed for five years on Thurs­day. In pass­ing sen­tence on Gopaul Seep­er­sad, Jus­tice Ge­of­frey Hen­der­son said the at­tack on Ran­dolph Sankar was un­pro­voked. Seep­er­sad, 52, al­so known as Car­men Jones, went on tri­al in the San Fer­nan­do Sec­ond As­sizes on Jan­u­ary 16 af­ter he plead­ed not guilty to wound­ing with in­tent.

How­ev­er af­ter Sankar and Dr Shari Khan gave ev­i­dence, Seep­er­sad changed his plea to guilty on Jan­u­ary 27. Seep­er­sad's at­tor­ney Ramesh Deena said his client did not want to put Sankar, whom he had known for ten years, through fur­ther stress. He asked that his client be placed on a bond.

Sankar said at around 12.15 am on April 16, 2005, he was at Debe Junc­tion eat­ing fried her­ring when he heard some­one curs­ing and re­alised it was Seep­er­sad, who was hold­ing a crook stick and brush­ing cut­lass. Sankar said he told Seep­er­sad to stop curs­ing and be­have, but Seep­er­sad cursed him.

Sankar said he of­fered him some fish and told him to calm down. How­ev­er, Seep­er­sad crossed the street and threw the crook stick at him, hit­ting him above his left arm. Seep­er­sad then chopped Sankar on the head with a cut­lass. The judge re­called the doc­tor's ev­i­dence that the head wound was se­ri­ous and such in­juries can be life-threat­en­ing and grave. The doc­tor said part of the skull was pro­trud­ing and there was a break in the smooth­ness of the bone. Sankar spent three days in hos­pi­tal.

When Seep­er­sad was sen­tenced he im­me­di­ate­ly in­di­cat­ed his in­ten­tion to ap­peal. State at­tor­ney An­gel­i­ca Teelucks­ingh pros­e­cut­ed the mat­ter.