Resh­ma Ra­goonath

Mara­bel­la box­er and his 22-year-old friend were re­fused bail yes­ter­day, when they ap­peared in court charged with pos­ses­sion of a home­made shot­gun and am­mu­ni­tion. Box­er Bri­an George, 22, and his friend, Ker­ron Par­ris, a painter, of Mon­ty Street, Mara­bel­la, were re­mand­ed in­to cus­tody yes­ter­day when they ap­peared be­fore act­ing deputy Chief Mag­is­trate Ra­jen­dra Ram­bachan. Both men stood be­fore the San Fer­nan­do First Court mag­is­trate charged joint­ly with pos­ses­sion of an il­le­gal firearm and pos­ses­sion of one round of 12 gauge am­mu­ni­tion last Sat­ur­day. They were al­so joint­ly charged with pos­ses­sion of 212 grammes of mar­i­jua­na. Par­ris was charged sep­a­rate­ly with break­ing and en­ter­ing in­to the home of Rhon­da Lewis-Pe­ters on April 24, 2012 at Bat­too Av­enue, Mara­bel­la and steal­ing a wal­let val­ued $200 and a dig­i­tal cam­era val­ued $1500.

The men were ar­rest­ed by PC Wen­dell Gor­don who laid the charges in­dictably. Court Pros­e­cu­tor Ram­dath Phillip ob­ject­ed to bail. He said he was un­able to ob­tain a crim­i­nal record trace for the men. Ram­bachan ex­plained that he need­ed the trace to de­ter­mine bail since, if they were to have three or more sched­uled of­fences or three or more con­vic­tions, they would not be en­ti­tled to bail. Phillip asked for an ad­journ­ment to next week so he could get the trace done. "Next week?," Ram­bachan asked. The Pros­e­cu­tor said, "The (trac­ing) sys­tem is giv­ing prob­lems. I would need some time to check." Ram­bachan ad­journed the mat­ter to May 31. He ad­vised the men of their right to ap­ply to a judge in cham­bers. George and Par­ris were ar­rest­ed on May 20. Gor­don, to­geth­er with act­ing In­spec­tor An­tho­ny Charles, ex­e­cut­ed a search war­rant at a house at Mon­ty Street, Mara­bel­la where the gun, am­mu­ni­tion and drugs were al­leged­ly found.