SASCHA WIL­SON

As she sen­tenced a young man to 30 months in jail for pos­ses­sion of an il­le­gal firearm and am­mu­ni­tion, Se­nior Mag­is­trate Jo-anne Con­nor yes­ter­day lament­ed the preva­lence of gun crimes in T&T. She al­so re­ject­ed a re­quest for a non-cus­to­di­al sen­tence for 23-year-old Kerdel Pe­ters.

Pe­ters plead­ed guilty to the two charges ear­li­er this week and was re­mand­ed in cus­tody for the po­lice to check whether he had a crim­i­nal record. The court heard that around 10.45 pm on Thurs­day po­lice of­fi­cers on a road­block ex­er­cise along the SS Erin Road in Palmiste saw a Corol­la NZE turn around and head in the op­po­site di­rec­tion. PCs Bais­den and Ma­habir be­came sus­pi­cious and went in pur­suit of the ve­hi­cle.

When the car stopped, the of­fi­cer or­dered the three oc­cu­pants, in­clud­ing Pe­ters, out of the ve­hi­cle. Pe­ters ran off but was held a short dis­tance away. He was searched and the of­fi­cers found a .38 re­volver with six rounds of am­mu­ni­tion tucked in his waist. Charges were laid by PC Bais­den.

Pe­ters’s at­tor­ney Ravi Dood­nath asked the mag­is­trate to con­sid­er that he had plead­ed guilty at the first op­por­tu­ni­ty and did not waste the court’s time. He said Pe­ters, who worked with his fa­ther, was sor­ry for his ac­tions

Not­ing that his client’s con­vic­tions were for mi­nor of­fences, in­clud­ing two traf­fic of­fences and mar­i­jua­na pos­ses­sion, Dood­nath asked the mag­is­trate to ex­er­cise le­nien­cy.

“He was in the wrong place at the wrong time,” he said.

How­ev­er, Mag­is­trate Con­nor re­called that when Pe­ters first ap­peared in court he said he had the firearm at home and a friend took it to scare some­one. She said Pe­ters did not ex­plain why he had the firearm.

“It can­not es­cape the court that the ma­jor­i­ty of rob­beries of rob­beries and cap­i­tal of­fences are com­mit­ted by firearms,” she said.

Pe­ters was sen­tenced to 30 months in jail with hard labour on the firearm charge and will serve 12 months on the am­mu­ni­tion charges. The sen­tences will run con­cur­rent­ly.

Pe­ters was al­so charged with as­sault­ing a po­lice of­fi­cer but plead­ed not guilty. On that charge, he was grant­ed $30,000 ap­proval bail with a cash bail al­ter­na­tive of $5,000.