Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

A man was freed of rob­bing a watch­man and shoot­ing at a group of po­lice of­fi­cers to avoid be­ing ap­pre­hend­ed in 2016.

Ron Marchan was dis­charged by High Court Mas­ter Deli­cia Bethelmy dur­ing a suf­fi­cien­cy hear­ing yes­ter­day.

Marchan’s lawyer, Bhi­mal Ma­hara­jh, ap­plied for him to be dis­charged based on the fact that State pros­e­cu­tors missed dead­lines for the fil­ing of the in­dict­ment and ev­i­dence against his client and failed to seek an ex­ten­sion.

Ma­hara­jh sug­gest­ed that the un­war­rant­ed de­lay was un­just to his client, who had been await­ing the re­sult of the suf­fi­cien­cy hear­ing to know if he had to face tri­al for a se­ries of charges.

He al­so point­ed out that there were de­lays while his case was be­fore a mag­is­trate be­fore be­ing trans­ferred to Mas­ter Bethelmy un­der the pro­vi­sions of the Ad­min­is­tra­tion of Jus­tice (In­dictable Pro­ceed­ings) Act (AJI­PA).

The leg­is­la­tion re­placed pro­tract­ed pre­lim­i­nary en­quiries be­fore mag­is­trates with swifter suf­fi­cien­cy hear­ings be­fore High Court Mas­ters.

Mas­ter Bethelmy agreed and up­held the ap­pli­ca­tion.

Marchan was ac­cused of com­mit­ting the of­fences on Feb­ru­ary 10, 2016.

The watch­man was per­form­ing his du­ties at a used car deal­er­ship, lo­cat­ed off the Uri­ah But­ler High­way in Ch­agua­nas, when he stepped out­side to sit in his ve­hi­cle.

He was re­port­ed­ly am­bushed by four men, in­clud­ing one whom he knew, who pulled him out of the car and stamped on him re­peat­ed­ly.

They took his cell­phone and led him to a room in the build­ing where they tied his hands be­hind his back.

One of the men re­port­ed­ly sprayed a liq­uid in his eyes, which caused them to burn. Po­lice of­fi­cers re­spond­ed to the scene and freed the watch­man. They at­tempt­ed to in­ter­cept the sus­pects’ ve­hi­cle but were shot at and re­turned fire.

The ve­hi­cle crashed in the vicin­i­ty of a lay-by along the Solomon Ho­choy High­way.

One of the sus­pects was wound­ed and was tak­en to the hos­pi­tal, where he suc­cumbed to his in­juries. His ac­com­plices man­aged to evade cap­ture. Marchan was ar­rest­ed al­most a week lat­er. He was charged with shoot­ing with in­tent, rob­bery with vi­o­lence and pos­ses­sion of a firearm and am­mu­ni­tion af­ter be­ing al­leged­ly iden­ti­fied by the vic­tim.