Sascha Wil­son

A se­cu­ri­ty guard who po­lice claim shot him­self in the groin last Sat­ur­day has been grant­ed $75,000 bail.John Hazel, 41, of Lopinot Set­tle­ment, Arou­ca, who walked with the aid of crutch­es be­cause of the in­jury, reap­peared be­fore Mag­is­trate Maria Bus­by Ear­le-Cad­dle in the Rio Claro Mag­is­trates Court yes­ter­day.He was charged with pos­ses­sion of an il­le­gal firearm and am­mu­ni­tion.

The shoot­ing in­ci­dent has at­tract­ed in­ter­na­tion­al at­ten­tion. Among oth­er Web sites, the Huff­in­g­ton Post car­ried the sto­ry in its Weird News sec­tion, quot­ing from an ar­ti­cle in the T&T Guardian. Gawk­er.com and msn.com al­so car­ried it.The po­lice claimed they found Hazel sit­ting in a parked car in Rio Claro, bleed­ing from the groin area, on Jan­u­ary 19.

He was tak­en for med­ical treat­ment, af­ter which Cpl Ma­habir charged him with be­ing in pos­ses­sion of a .38 re­volver and four rounds of am­mu­ni­tionOn Mon­day, the mag­is­trate de­nied Hazel bail to give the po­lice an op­por­tu­ni­ty to car­ry out a fin­ger­print trace to see if he had pre­vi­ous mat­ters be­fore the court.

Yes­ter­day, court pros­e­cu­tor Sgt Alex­is Gar­cia said the trace re­vealed he was a first-time of­fend­er.The mag­is­trate ad­journed the mat­ter to Feb­ru­ary 21.