Sascha Wil­son 

Se­nior Re­porter 

sascha.wil­son@guardain.co.tt 

A Gas­par­il­lo land­lord, who ob­tained an il­le­gal firearm for pro­tec­tion af­ter be­ing the tar­get of sev­er­al home in­va­sions, was yes­ter­day cart­ed off to prison to start a four-year sen­tence.

High Court Judge Lisa Ram­sumair-Hinds hand­ed down the sen­tence on 48-year-old Isi­ah Jobe, af­ter he plead­ed guilty to one count of pos­ses­sion of a firearm and two counts of pos­ses­sion of am­mu­ni­tion.

The court heard that po­lice went to Jobe’s Gas­par­il­lo’s home on March 14, 2024, and found him in his en­closed yard with a pis­tol. They al­so found am­mu­ni­tion in his apart­ment. 

Jobe told the po­lice that he had the firearm and am­mu­ni­tion to pro­tect his ail­ing moth­er and his sis­ter, as peo­ple were tak­ing ad­van­tage of them. In a press state­ment yes­ter­day, his at­tor­neys, Sub­has Pan­day and Jared Ram­saran, stat­ed that they sub­mit­ted to the court that Jobe got the gun and am­mu­ni­tion to pro­tect his fam­i­ly and his prop­er­ty.

The at­tor­neys al­so sub­mit­ted that Jobe was the vic­tim of sev­er­al home in­va­sions which were re­port­ed to the po­lice. How­ev­er, some­times the po­lice re­spond­ed while oth­er times they would in­di­cate that they did not have the ve­hi­cles.

The at­tor­neys said ban­dits and tres­passers would hide be­hind bush­es near the wall of their client’s prop­er­ty, de­stroy his fence, jump his wall and steal items such as hoses, whack­ers and pow­er wash­ers and pumps among oth­er things. 

Pan­day said Jobe once con­front­ed them but he had to re­treat af­ter a gun was point­ed at him. The at­tor­neys added that Jobe, the own­er of an apart­ment com­plex, al­so com­plained that in­trud­ers would en­ter his premis­es, dam­age the ten­ants’ ve­hi­cles and break open their apart­ments. They ar­gued that Jobe on­ly in­tend­ed to use the firearm to scare off the ban­dits and nev­er re­moved it from his premis­es. 

Ask­ing for le­nien­cy, the at­tor­neys not­ed that Jobe was a first-time of­fend­er and a good fa­ther who main­tains his son, who stud­ies abroad. Fur­ther sub­mit­ting that Jobe was re­morse­ful, the at­tor­neys said he plead­ed guilty at the ear­li­est op­por­tu­ni­ty.

While not­ing that she was al­so a vic­tim of rob­bery, the at­tor­neys said Jus­tice Ram­sumair-Hinds in­di­cat­ed the of­fences were se­ri­ous and the court must up­hold the law.

Not­ing that Par­lia­ment in­creased the max­i­mum penal­ty from 10 to 20 years hard labour, she sen­tenced him to four years and two months on the first two of­fences, and three years on the oth­er of­fence. The sen­tences, how­ev­er, were or­dered to run con­cur­rent­ly. 

The mat­ter was pros­e­cut­ed by state at­tor­ney Char­maine Samuel. 

The Gov­ern­ment is cur­rent­ly work­ing on in­tro­duc­ing stand your ground leg­is­la­tion to give home­own­ers the le­gal right to pro­tect them­selves and their prop­er­ty us­ing dead­ly force in self-de­fence.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­cent­ly an­nounced that a spe­cial com­mit­tee would be es­tab­lished by Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der to eval­u­ate and make pro­pos­als for ef­fec­tive mea­sures to en­able cit­i­zens to de­fend them­selves and their prop­er­ty when faced with a threat by crim­i­nals.

It was al­so an­nounced that a spe­cial com­mit­tee will be es­tab­lished to con­sid­er ap­proach­es to com­bat home in­va­sions and the de­vel­op­ment of ap­pro­pri­ate leg­isla­tive sanc­tions to com­bat home in­va­sions in Trinidad and To­ba­go.