Campden Park man must pay for stealing, skinning neighbour’s goat 

A Campden Park man who stole and slaughtered his neighbours’ ram goat has been ordered to pay her EC$200 for the animal.

Christopher Isaacs told Magistrate John Ballah at the Kingstown Magistrate’s Court, on Friday, that he didn’t know who was the owner of the animal that came onto his property and “eat out thing”.

According to the facts presented by Prosecutor Shamrock Pierre, on April 2,  about 5 a.m., Isaacs’ neighbour, Cotisha Bowens, had tended to her two ewes and a black and white ram goat that she rears in her yard.

Later that day, someone informed Bowens that the defendant was dragging her ram goat onto his property.

Bowens went to Isaacs’s property and met him skinning the animal.

She reported the matter to the police and PC 297 Frederick responded but did not meet the defendant at the scene. 

He, however, saw the carcass of a black and white goat, with its skin partly removed, to the back of the defendant’s property.

The court heard that the animal remains were taken to the Questelles Police Station and kept in cold storage as an exhibit.

The exhibit was not presented to the court.

Isaacs pleaded guilty to the charge that on April 2, he stole one black and white ram goat valued at EC$200, Bowens’ property.

He told the court that he didn’t know who the animals belonged to. He said they came onto his property and “eat out thing.”

Isaacs said he chased away the animals but they came back and he pelted a stone that caught one.

Isaacs said he took the dead animal in the road but no one came to claim it.

“The goat was in the sun for over an hour and it had started to swell so I say, ‘let me go and start to skin it’.”

Isaacs said he works three days weekly at the Flour Mill and is paid EC$30 per day to “load flour onto trolleys and take it to the truck for distribution”.

After weighing the aggravating and mitigating factors, the magistrate ordered the defendant to pay EC$200 compensation in 90 days. In default he will spend two months in prison.