A 19-year-old plumber from Bel­mont, charged with be­ing in pos­ses­sion of eight as­sault ri­fles, was yes­ter­day grant­ed $500,000 bail. 

Aaron Rogers, of St Fran­cois Val­ley Road, Bel­mont, was grant­ed bail af­ter he ap­peared be­fore Mag­is­trate Aden Stroude in the Port-of-Spain Mag­is­trates’ Court, yes­ter­day morn­ing. 

Po­lice pros­e­cu­tors ob­ject­ed to bail for the teenag­er as they claim that he fell un­der the Bail (Amend­ment) Act 2019, which de­nies bail to re­peat of­fend­ers charged with firearm pos­ses­sion for 120 days. 

They al­so asked Stroude to con­sid­er the num­ber of firearms that Rogers is ac­cused of be­ing in pos­ses­sion of. 

Rogers’ lawyer Alex­ia Romero chal­lenged the claim as she point­ed out that he had one con­vic­tion for rob­bery with ag­gra­va­tion from 2017, which was re­moved from his crim­i­nal record af­ter he com­plet­ed court-or­dered com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice. 

Romero not­ed that the of­fence does not fall with­in the sched­ule of of­fences cov­ered by the leg­is­la­tion. 

She al­so chal­lenged the strength of the po­lice’s case as she not­ed that Rogers was ar­rest­ed while sleep­ing in the back-seat of a car, which was not his. 

Stroude even­tu­al­ly agreed with Romero and grant­ed Rogers bail. 

Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, Rogers was ar­rest­ed, last Thurs­day, while po­lice were con­duct­ing an an­ti-crime ex­er­cise at a hous­ing com­plex in his com­mu­ni­ty. 

It was dur­ing a search of a Nis­san Almera, which Rogers was sit­ting in that po­lice al­leged­ly found the dis­as­sem­bled AR-15 as­sault ri­fles and 14 mag­a­zines, hid­den in two speak­er box­es in the trunk of the car. 

Rogers was among 11 per­sons, who were ar­rest­ed dur­ing the ex­er­cise. 

On Tues­day, Romero and at­tor­ney Wayne Sturge filed a se­ries of habeas cor­pus ap­pli­ca­tions chal­leng­ing their con­tin­ued de­ten­tion with­out be­ing charged. 

Be­fore the case could come up for an emer­gency hear­ing be­fore a High Court Judge on the Re­pub­lic Day pub­lic hol­i­day, Rogers was charged and the oth­ers were re­leased by po­lice. 

Rogers, who is al­so be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Kir­by Joseph, will reap­pear in court on Oc­to­ber 31.