A 47-year-old man from San Fer­nan­do has been sen­tenced to a lit­tle over four months in prison for steal­ing pow­er tools from a fam­i­ly he knew. 

Chris Gour re­ceived the sen­tence af­ter he plead­ed guilty to lar­ce­ny be­fore High Court Mas­ter Sarah De Sil­va, last week.

Ac­cord­ing to the ev­i­dence, on Jan­u­ary 29, a man se­cured two drills, a saw and a jig­saw, val­ued at $5,100, in the gallery of his La Ro­maine home. 

Sev­er­al days lat­er, the man’s fa­ther, who lives with him, claimed he saw Gour, whom he (the fa­ther) knew since he (Gour) was a child, en­ter the prop­er­ty and leave with the tools. 

When he was even­tu­al­ly ar­rest­ed by the po­lice, Gour con­fessed to steal­ing the tools.

In de­ter­min­ing the ap­pro­pri­ate sen­tence for Gour, Mas­ter De Sil­va not­ed that the max­i­mum in law is $250,000 and im­pris­on­ment for two years. 

Af­ter con­sid­er­ing the cir­cum­stances of the case, in­clud­ing the lack of phys­i­cal vi­o­lence and no ev­i­dence of forced en­try, she de­cid­ed on a start­ing sen­tence of nine months in prison.

Stat­ing that a prison term was ap­plic­a­ble, Mas­ter De Sil­va said: “The Court con­sid­ered whether a non-cus­to­di­al sen­tence is ap­pro­pri­ate and based on his cir­cum­stances, he is un­able to pay a fine or com­pen­sa­tion as he is un­em­ployed with no fi­nances.”

Af­ter ap­ply­ing a one-third dis­count for his ear­ly guilty plea and de­duct­ing the time he spent on re­mand be­fore be­ing sen­tenced, Gour was left with four months and eight days to serve be­fore he could be re­leased. 

Gour was rep­re­sent­ed by Aleena Ram­jag, while Ker­line Gopie pros­e­cut­ed the case.