A man who act­ed as a look­out as his ac­com­plice beat a woman and her son and stole the boy’s phone has been jailed for 38 months.

Alvin Thomas ap­peared in the Siparia Mag­is­trates’ Court where he plead­ed guilty to as­sault­ing Di­ane Sir­jus­ingh with in­tent to rob and rob­bing and beat­ing her 14-year-old son. Thomas is re­lat­ed to the vic­tims.

When con­front­ed by the po­lice with video footage from the in­ci­dent, Thomas re­port­ed­ly said, “Yeah, that’s me.”

The in­ci­dent took place on March 18 at Del­hi Road, Fyz­abad. Pros­e­cu­tor Sgt Starr Ja­cob said around 10 am the moth­er and son were walk­ing along the road when they were ap­proached by Thomas and an­oth­er man.

Thomas’s ac­com­plice an­nounced a hold-up and be­gan pulling the woman’s hand­bag. The woman was beat­en re­peat­ed­ly beat­en on her head and shoul­der when she re­fused to let go of her bag. The boy was al­so hit on the head and up­per body when he tried to help his moth­er. Fear­ing for their lives, the boy then hand­ed over his $2,800 cell­phone to the man. The men then ran off.

Af­ter con­duct­ing in­quiries and ob­tain­ing the footage, po­lice went to John Jules Trace, Fyz­abad, where they ar­rest­ed Thomas. He told the po­lice he did not know what over­took him that day. He ad­mit­ted to be­ing the look­out for “po­lice and cars.” The of­fi­cers searched his house but the phone was not found. The footage, which in­clud­ed two clips, was not shown to First Court Se­nior Mag­is­trate Mar­garet Alert yes­ter­day, as it was in the pos­ses­sion of the Cy­ber Crime Unit. The pros­e­cu­tor said in­quiries were con­tin­u­ing in re­la­tion to the sec­ond man, who is well known to the po­lice.

The mag­is­trate even­tu­al­ly sen­tenced Thomas to 38 months on each charge to run con­cur­rent­ly.