A man whose mother said he is “very disrespectful” and has caused her to suffer two nervous breakdowns has been sentenced to three months in prison for assaulting and threatening his sister.
“You ever went to prison, Mr. Prince,” Senior Magistrate Colin John asked the man, Sheldon Prince, at the Kingstown Magistrate’s Court on Thursday.
“Yes,” Prince responded.
“When last you went around there?” John asked.
“Around 10 years ago,” the defendant said.
“That shows you probably need a refresher course, Mr. Prince,” the magistrate said, before sentencing him to two three-month prison terms to run concurrently.
Prince pleaded “guilty with an explanation” to a charge that on March 19, at Belair, in circumstance likely to cause a breach of the peace, he made use of threatening language to Shelicia Joseph, of Belair, to wit “Ah go stab you mother***t and bleach for yo in the bathroom and kill yo mother***t “.
He pleaded similarly to a charge that on March 19, in Belair, he did assault Joseph with intent to commit wounding.
The facts, as presented by the prosecutor, acting Corporal of Police Corlene Samuel, are that Prince and Joseph are siblings who have the same mother and live in the same yard.
On March 19, around 7:30 a.m., Joseph was at home when Prince came home and started to curse their mother.
Joseph did not pay him any mind at first but the situation escalated and the defendant went to the back of the house and returned with a knife, pointed it at his mother’s face and started to threaten her.
Joseph then told him to behave but Prince got upset and pushed the knife in her face as well and used the words in the complaint.
Joseph reported the matter to the police, leading to Prince’s arrest.
Asked what he had to say, Prince told the court that he was intoxicated and had not meant to do his sister anything.
He told the court that if his sister and mother wished, he would apologise to them in front of the court because he did not want to “go down that road” and go to prison.
The senior magistrate called Joseph and her mother into the dock and asked them, what, if anything, they wanted to say.
“He is my son, but he is very disrespectful,” Prince’s mother told the court.
“I cannot have …peace with him. Every time, whether he drunk or he sober, is just bad word.”
She said there is a common bathroom on the outside of the house that Prince has threatened to break off.
The mother said he defecates in the bathroom and does not flush it.
“I am sick and tired. I got two nervous breakdowns because of my son. Last year August, I was home on a month’s sick leave. Nervous breakdown … I don’t want him to go to prison, I just want him to get out of my way.”
The mother told the court that the Calliaqua police had assisted her in throwing Prince out of the house but Prince was sleeping under the house and would come at all hours of the night and beat on the house.
“I fear for my life,” she said, adding that her two grandchildren run every time they see Prince coming into the yard.
“I just want him to come and take his clothes or get a restraining order for him that I don’t want him around me. And anytime he come and do that again, well, let he go to prison.”
Meanwhile, Joseph told the court that she fears for her life “because he always threatening me especially.
“This is the second time. The first time, I was sleeping and I felt him over me and I woke up and saw him with an ice pick over me,” she said.
“I fear for my life. I don’t interfere with this young man. He is my brother but I don’t interfere with him and he always interferes with me every time I see him.”
She said Prince could curse her all he wants but she is concerned about their mother who takes on the situation and has had two nervous breakdowns because of it.
“And I don’t want to lose my mommy because of him,” she said.
In handing down his sentence, John said he had heard what Prince’s mother had said about not wanting him to go to prison.
“But it is not her case; it is the Crown’s case,” he said, adding that the court has to decide what is in the best interest of justice.
“I hope that you learn when you go around so,” the magistrate told Prince.
I was very interested to read that Senior Magistrate Colin John said, ““But it is not her case; it is the Crown’s case,” he said, adding that the court has to decide what is in the best interest of justice.” This is in direct opposition to what we have repeatedly heard from the judge who presides over cases at the Union Island court. If a virtual complainant says he or she forgives the culprit, the culprit is set free.