A 52-year-old man from Siparia will have to spend the rest of the year in prison as he awaits his sen­tence for at­tack­ing a me­chan­ic with a brush­cut­ter dur­ing an ar­gu­ment in 2006. 

Ear­ly last month, High Court Judge Hay­den St Clair-Dou­glas found Al­lan Luke guilty of ma­li­cious­ly wound­ing Rod­ney “Yam” Robin­son and ma­li­cious­ly dam­ag­ing Robin­son’s ve­hi­cle af­ter a judge-alone tri­al and re­mand­ed him in­to cus­tody pend­ing sen­tenc­ing. 

When Jus­tice St Clair-Dou­glas re­served his de­ci­sion on sen­tence af­ter hear­ing a mit­i­ga­tion plea dur­ing a vir­tu­al hear­ing yes­ter­day, Luke’s lawyer Su­san Charles-Sylvester sought to ap­ply for bail to al­low her client to “put his af­fairs in or­der.” 

Jus­tice St Clair-Dou­glas re­fused the re­quest as he not­ed that bail pend­ing sen­tenc­ing is on­ly grant­ed in ex­cep­tion­al cir­cum­stances that did not ap­ply to Luke’s case.

Ac­cord­ing to the ev­i­dence in the case, the in­ci­dent oc­curred around 7.15 am on Au­gust 30, 2006, while Luke was cut­ting grass at the side of Coo­ra Road in Siparia and Robin­son was us­ing the route to drop his son home. 

Robin­son claimed that he stopped his Nis­san B14 near Luke and warned him that he was pitch­ing grass and stones on­to ve­hi­cles dri­ving along the road. 

Robin­son claimed that while his ve­hi­cle was not struck by the de­bris, he used ob­scene lan­guage to­wards Luke. 

He ad­mit­ted that he got out of his car and threw two stones at Luke but claimed that he missed. 

Robin­son claimed that when he got in­to his car to dri­ve away, Luke at­tacked him with the brush­cut­ter. 

He claimed that the brush cut­ter broke his dri­ver-side win­dow and dam­aged parts of the door caus­ing $1,150 in dam­age. He al­so al­leged that he sus­tained a 15 cm cut on his left arm, which re­quired 19 stitch­es. 

Luke tes­ti­fied and claimed that Robin­son was the ag­gres­sor and threat­ened him sev­er­al times be­fore throw­ing the stones. 

Luke claimed that he ap­proached Robin­son’s car and the brush­cut­ter ac­ci­den­tal­ly struck the win­dow as Robin­son sought to hasti­ly open the door to con­front him.

In her sub­mis­sions, Charles-Sylvester called for a le­nient sen­tence for Luke. 

She not­ed that while Luke was em­ployed as a labour­er with the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port at the time of the in­ci­dent, he is now em­ployed as a dri­ver with the Min­istry of Cul­ture. She al­so claimed that Luke dri­ves a taxi part-time. 

In her sub­mis­sions, pros­e­cu­tor In­di­ra Chinebas dis­agreed that Luke should be giv­en a non-cus­to­di­al sen­tence. 

She said that de­spite his claims of re­morse, he de­nied all wrong­do­ing un­til he was re­cent­ly con­vict­ed by Jus­tice St Clair-Dou­glas. 

While he did not pro­nounce a sen­tence dur­ing the hear­ing, Jus­tice St Clair-Dou­glas did in­di­cate that he agreed with the State that a prison term should be im­posed. 

How­ev­er, he said he would strong­ly con­sid­er the fact that Luke of­fered to pay Robin­son com­pen­sa­tion.

St Clair-Dou­glas not­ed that while Robin­son had agreed to ac­cept $20,000 in com­pen­sa­tion, he felt that the fig­ure was too high based on the cir­cum­stances and in­juries sus­tained. 

He sug­gest­ed that $15,000 would be more ap­pro­pri­ate. 

Luke is ex­pect­ed to be sen­tenced on Jan­u­ary 5.