Two of the four sus­pects who were joint­ly charged in con­nec­tion with the Sep­tem­ber 20th lar­ce­ny in­ci­dent in Man­zanil­la were sen­tenced yes­ter­day to 18 months hard labour.

Tyrese Jones, 24, of Fran­cis Av­enue, Pe­tit Bourg and Shel­don Gy­ton, 38, of Mt. Lam­bert, San Juan, were each sen­tenced to prison when they ap­peared vir­tu­al­ly be­fore Mag­is­trate Cheron Raphael at the San­gre Grande Mag­is­trates’ Court.

Two of the oth­er ac­cused, Amir Ali, 22, of Tenth Street, Mt. Lam­bert, and Arnold Ram­lal, 26, of Chick­land Vil­lage, Up­per Cara­pichaima, plead­ed not guilty.

They were de­nied bail.

Ali and Ram­lal will reap­pear be­fore the court on Oc­to­ber 20 to an­swer the charge.

The four were charged on Sep­tem­ber 24th by Cpl (Ag.) Fran­cis, of the Man­zanil­la Po­lice Post, who took the lead in in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to a re­port of lar­ce­ny in­volv­ing a choco­late com­pa­ny truck in the dis­trict.

Ac­cord­ing to po­lice re­ports, at 4.15 pm on Sep­tem­ber 20, a sales­man was con­duct­ing busi­ness on be­half of a choco­late com­pa­ny

at a gas sta­tion along the East­ern Main Road, Man­zanil­la, when he left the ve­hi­cle’s en­gine run­ning.

The sales­man told po­lice that when he en­tered the gas sta­tion with his col­league he ob­served mo­ments lat­er that the ve­hi­cle was be­ing dri­ven away in a west­er­ly di­rec­tion along the road­way.

Po­lice were im­me­di­ate­ly con­tact­ed and an all-point bul­letin was is­sued.

Mo­ments lat­er, of­fi­cers at­tached to the Emer­gency Re­sponse Pa­trol in­ter­cept­ed a gold Navara with four oc­cu­pants, fit­ting the de­scrip­tion of the sus­pects.

They were de­tained and lat­er joint­ly charged with the of­fence.

Po­lice al­so re­cov­ered the sales­man’s ve­hi­cle along Cedar Hill Road, Man­zanil­la.