Guards, driver get bail

SPANISH TOWN, St Catherine – Four security guards employed to Ranger Security Limited and a driver who were arrested for conspiracy to defraud goods valued at $29,000, were granted bail in the sum of $40,000 each when they appeared in the St Catherine Criminal Court.

The five will return to court on Tuesday, May, 8, when the case will again be mentioned.

Arrested and charged with conspiracy are security guards Raymond Garwood, Shawn Mais, Nicholas Neilson and Venece Bovette and driver Lynval Gordon.

It was alleged that on the morning of April 10, about 5:00 in the morning, a group security manager at the Wisynco factory in Twickenham Park, St Catherine visited the facility and allegedly saw a blue pick-up truck, said to be driven by Gordon, leaving the compound. The court was told that he became suspicious and searched the truck and allegedly found it to be carrying goods including corn beef, juice and hand towels, valued at $29,000. The matter was reported to the Portmore police and upon investigation arrested and charged the five defendants.

The guards, the court heard, started working on the 7:00 pm shift and were scheduled to end their schedule at 7:00 the morning the truck was allegedly seen leaving the compound with goods.Beckles denied bail again

– T K Whyte

RODNEY Beckles, the son of a University of the West Indies (UWI) professor, was denied bail in his murder case for the third time last week, despite lengthy, impassioned pleas by his attorney that he would join a drug rehabilitation programme and that his place at the UWI was still available to him.

Beckles, the son of Professor Hillary Beckles, principal of the UWI’s Cave Hill Campus in Barbados, shook his head and smiled in disbelief after his bail application was denied by Justice Marva McIntosh in the Home Circuit Court last Thursday.

Justice McIntosh, in denying bail, said she was not satisfied, despite the assurances that Beckles, 21, would turn up for his trial and that she was not certain he would make the best use of a drug rehab programme.

Beckles is charged with the January 3, 2007 stabbing death of friend and alleged ganja smoking partner Khalil Campbell, 28, the son of high court judge Lennox Campbell.

– Paul Henry

Sentencing of child sex abuser postponed

THE sentencing of convicted child sex abuser Kerron Henry, 20, was postponed on Monday in the Home Circuit Court, due to an incomplete social enquiry report into his background.

Henry, who was found guilty on buggery, carnal abuse and assault charges in court last Thursday, is now scheduled for sentencing on May 10.

A jury of six women and one man, after hearing evidence that Henry sexually assaulted the girl, who was five at the time of the attack on June 29, 2004, took just under an hour to find him guilty.

Further evidence was led that Henry had also beat the child all over the body with a piece of board and banged her head on the floor and door of his house.

The girl and her siblings were left in the care of Henry at his home by the victim’s mother who took Henry’s mother to the hospital after she fainted during an argument with Henry.