KEVON FELMINE

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Two Venezue­lan men were sen­tenced to three years in prison with hard labour yes­ter­day af­ter plead­ing guilty to last week’s armed rob­bery at a Clax­ton Bay phar­ma­cy.

In ad­di­tion to their sen­tence for rob­bery with ag­gra­va­tion, Jose Gre­go­rio Jist Di­az and Alexan­der Jose Tole­do Qui­ja­da were al­so sen­tenced to nine months im­pris­on­ment by Cou­va mag­is­trate Michelle Ma­hara­jh-Brown for il­le­gal­ly en­ter­ing the coun­try.

A third sus­pect, Sean Blan­co, a lo­cal, plead­ed not guilty to the of­fence. He was de­nied bail.

The pros­e­cu­tor, Sgt Lin­coln Bon­net, told the Cou­va Mag­is­trate Court that around 2.10 pm on De­cem­ber 18, a sales clerk was on du­ty at Ba­sics and Be­yond Phar­ma­cy and Con­ve­nient Store along Cedar Hill Road, Clax­ton Bay when three gun­men en­tered and an­nounced a rob­bery. The clerk was robbed of $2,000, gro­ceries val­ued $700, an iPhone 6 val­ued $4,000, a gold Cit­i­zen wrist­watch val­ued $350, his wal­let and its con­tents val­ued $645. The gun­men then ran off along Cedar Hill Road and es­caped.

A re­port was made to Cou­va po­lice Blan­co was ar­rest­ed the fol­low­ing day.

In­ves­ti­ga­tions led po­lice to Sun­dars­ingh Street, Pe­nal where they found Di­az and Qui­ja­da. When asked if they un­der­stood Eng­lish, the sus­pects replied “very lit­tle.”

They found Qui­ja­da wear­ing a gold Cit­i­zen wrist­watch that matched the one stolen from the sales clerk. They were both ar­rest­ed and tak­en back to the Cou­va Po­lice Sta­tion. Last Sat­ur­day, they were in­ter­viewed sep­a­rate­ly with the as­sis­tance of an in­ter­preter.

On Thurs­day, the men were placed on iden­ti­fi­ca­tion pa­rade and were iden­ti­fied. The sales clerk was al­so able to iden­ti­fy his wrist­watch through cer­tain mark­ings. The men were then charged and tak­en to court.