One week af­ter a La Ro­maine busi­ness­man and his wife were robbed of cash, jew­ellery, and a wed­ding ring dur­ing a home in­va­sion, po­lice have charged his broth­er with the crime.

Ronal­do Samai, 26, al­so of La Ro­maine, ap­peared be­fore Mas­ter Deni­cia Bethelmy in the San Fer­nan­do AJI­PA Court yes­ter­day, charged with one count of bur­glary and two counts of rob­bery with vi­o­lence. He plead­ed not guilty.

PC Ram­sa­roop laid the charges, which stemmed from the in­ci­dent, on Oc­to­ber 15. The pros­e­cu­tion elect­ed for a sum­ma­ry tri­al, and Samai was grant­ed $200,000 bail with a sure­ty. As a con­di­tion of his bail, he must re­port to the Cou­va Po­lice Sta­tion week­ly be­tween 6 am and 6 pm.

He was al­so or­dered not to vis­it the vic­tims’ home or con­tact them di­rect­ly or in­di­rect­ly. The mat­ter was trans­ferred to the San Fer­nan­do Dis­trict Court and ad­journed to No­vem­ber 19.

Ac­cord­ing to the po­lice re­port, the 30-year-old busi­ness­man and his wife were awak­ened around 3 am by a loud noise out­side their bed­room. Mo­ments lat­er, two men wear­ing dark hood­ies, one armed with a cut­lass, burst in­to the room.

One sus­pect bound the hus­band’s hands with plas­tic straps while the oth­er ran­sacked the house. The in­trud­ers fled with a bag con­tain­ing about 80 grams of gold scraps, a white gold wed­ding ring, three gold ban­gles, a Louis Vuit­ton hand­bag, and three gold be­ras. The men al­so took sev­er­al bot­tles of al­co­hol and $38,000 in cash.

Po­lice of­fi­cers from the South­ern Di­vi­sion re­spond­ed but found no signs of forced en­try. How­ev­er, in­ves­ti­ga­tors said the ban­dits ap­peared to have left through the front door.

—Kevon Felmine