The Nigerian-Vincentian woman charged with using a 90-year-old businessman’s credit card without his permission and stealing EC$1,472.01 from him has been denied bail.
On Friday, High Court judge Justice Brian Cottle granted Eunice Dowers EC$40,000 bail with one surety.
He granted bail after hearing an application by her new counsel Grant Connell, who took over from Jemalie John.
As part of the bail conditions, Dowers, née Armachi, 25, was ordered to surrender her travel document and to report to police on Mondays and Fridays between 6 a.m. and 6 p.m.
The court also ordered that stop notices be issued to ports of entry and exit.
Last Wednesday, Chief Magistrate Rechanne Browne had adjourned the woman’s case to March 23, one week after she had set the next hearing for May 23.
At Wednesday’s hearing, Connell had asked the court for clarification on the reasons for denying the woman bail, and the magistrate said because she was a flight risk.
Bail had been denied as the prosecution said detectives were investigating a number of suspicious transactions on DaSilva’s credit card.
The chief magistrate had said on Feb. 27 that while Dowers’s then lawyer, Jemalie John, had told the court that Dowers, who is married to a Vincentian, has been living in St. Vincent and the Grenadines for eight years, he had provided no proof of it.
iWitness News has
been able to independently verify that Dowers holds a St. Vincent and the
Grenadines passport.
Senior Prosecutor Adolphus Delplesche had objected to the woman’s bail as the matter came up for the second time in as many weeks.
Dowers was arraigned on Feb. 20, on charges that between Sept. 4 and 8, 2018 at Kingstown, with intent to defraud the First Caribbean International Bank, she was obtaining service by representing, without the consent of Bertille DaSilva, 90, of Indian Bay, that she was a holder of a credit card issued to him.
She was further charged that between the same dates, she took a credit card from DaSilva’s possession, without his consent.
The prosecution is alleging that between those same dates, she stole $1,200.37 and $271.64 from DaSilva.
DaSilva is a manager of Star Garage, where Dowers worked until recently, when she was involved in a violent lunchtime office brawl with her co-worker, Marlon Stephenson.
In objecting to bail, Delplesche said that detectives were concerned that Dowers would abscond and interfere with the investigation.
iWitness News understands that investigators are looking into some 400 suspicious transactions on DaSilva’s credit card.
Delplesche also told the court that while John has said that Dowers had been cooperating with the police, this was not the case.
He told the court that authorities had retrieved a particular item from the woman in prison.
“A particular item came from a particular place in the human anatomy that only a female has, when she went to prison,” Delplesche told the court.
iWitness News understands that Dowers had a thumb drive in her vagina in prison.
She reportedly told police that she had had it there for two weeks.
Do Nigerian women have something different from us other women? How can you have a thump drive in your private part for 2 weeks while in Prison? She would steal more if she gets the opportunity.
Sometimes the news is reported in a very peculiar way which influences a personal view of the facts. After I read about this case in the News last time, I commented about a personal experience involving a Nigerian person. From the reporting, I had not understood that the woman had stolen from a 90 year old person. Stealing is, of course, wrong but now that I read that it was from a 90-year-old man, I begin to read other things into the article. I hope that the accused woman get a fair trial seeing that she didn’t get fair news coverage.
The issue is not how the news is reported. The issue is how you read what is reported. The article on which you commented and detailed the alleged incident also said that the owner of the credit card in question is 90 years old.
sting you ha?
The information forthcoming in this news item pertaining to the subject (accused) in this matter with respect to a thumb drive that was retrieved and the details as to where it was retrieved and the duration of which the item was concealed in such an area, alone is disgusting enough and hence says much about the subject.