Choppins man jailed for a year

After chasing strong rum with strong rum, a Choppins resident took the law, and a heavy silver knife in his own hands, almost becoming a 54-year-old shopkeeper’s executioner.

Gemel “G” Williams, 36 years old, told the Serious Offences Court last Wednesday that the reason that he unlawfully and maliciously wounded a shopkeeper of Dauphine was that he felt threatened.

Williams, who was apparently in Canada for 16 months before he came back last year, claimed that the shopkeeper was always bothering him. He said after the night that they got into an argument, he woke up to find a bullet next to him, where he slept in an open area.

“I mean I felt so much threatened like, you know,” he told Chief Magistrate Rechanne Browne. “He was there all the time, I wasn’t even paying him no attention, until I see him over there watching me, watching me, watching me,” Williams recalled.

However, after listening to him, the magistrate commented that in all fairness to the complainant, “you cannot say is the virtual complainant leave the bullet. You can’t.”

“Did the bullet come with anything written?…you can’t say that he did that,” she told him, when he pointed out that they had had an argument.

Browne said that he didn’t see the complainant place the bullet there, and “So…you may assume but you can’t say that he did it.”

From the facts given by the police, it is established that on September 16, the day before the incident, the shopkeeper and Williams had been involved in a verbal exchange. The following day, at the shop in Dauphine, the defendant was liming at the shop premises at around 3:30 p.m. When he saw the shopkeeper, Williams came up behind him, grabbed him around his neck, and threw him on the ground. The shopkeeper began wrestling with him, not aware of what was going on.

However, from the ground he was able to stand and face Williams, who then took a knife from his waist and “threw” a stab, which caught the complainant on the left side of his hip. Another stab was thrown as the shopkeeper escaped, but it missed him.

Williams told the magistrate that he was “so drunk” and that he had drunk way more than half a bottle of strong rum. He said that he was drinking the rum, and chasing with what he thought was water, but then he felt that the water was strong, and it turned out to be rum.

He also told the magistrate that he was sorry for all the trouble he caused, and “I don’t really do things like that.”

However, the prosecution, Corporal 664 Wright, countered that the information that they have from the investigator, Corporal 328 May, is that “for the entire day, the defendant was like a menace in society.”

“There were numerous calls on the police for them to deal with the defendant because he appeared to have been under the influence for the entire day, and not only being under the influence, but he was rampaging through the village with the said weapon using it at other persons,” Wright relayed. He admitted that no written report was made against him, but the police have the information in their records.

Further, the prosecution asked the court to note that the offence was premeditated, and could have been more serious. “Had the virtual complainant not been able to dodge the defendant, and to run away, he would have received a second stab wound, and God only knows what sort of injuries that he would have sustained from that second one,” the Corporal stated.

“Your honour, society ills cannot be tempered with all these weapons,” he noted, making a suggestion of a custodial sentence for Williams.

After hearing this input from the prosecution, the defendant insisted that he never meant to stab the complainant, and had he meant to, he would have held him down. Williams said he only pulled the knife to say back off. “I coulda hold him down, but me nah really deh pon dah,” Williams reiterated.

Williams was sentenced the following day to spend a year in prison for the offence.