A 78-year-old man was on Thursday fined EC$1,200 to be paid in three months or one year imprisonment for wounding another man during an altercation that began with the man accusing a woman of being a “substitute”.
Robert Clarke’s brush with the law began with an exchange of words on a date unknown in Kingstown where he was with his girlfriend.
It culminated in Georgetown on March 28 when Clarke unlawfully and maliciously wounded Winston James, of Dixon Village.
Clarke, a resident of Caratal Road, Georgetown told the Georgetown Magistrate’s Court on April 8 that his girlfriend had got a van to go to Sandy Bay and he was speaking with another lady.
“While doing so, James came and say I using the other girl as substitute,” Clarke said.
He said he was accompanying a woman from Byera to the bus stop when James told her that she was a substitute to Clarke.
“Winston, you mind your business,” Clarke said he told James.
However, things came to a head on March 28 at Copper’s shop in Caratal, Georgetown which led to an altercation that resulted in Clarke being charged.
Clarke pleaded guilty to the wounding charge when he appeared before Magistrate Kaywana Jacobs at the Georgetown Magistrate’s Court on April 8.
Prosecutor Delando Charles read the facts, saying that on March 28, about 9:40 p.m., James, 55, was at a shop in Caratal when Charles approached him saying, “When you see me with woman, you shut your mouth.”
Clarke pushed James in his chest and the defendant pushed him back.
Clarke then picked up a bottle and struck James in the head with it, resulting in injuries.
In mitigation, Clarke told the court that as he went to the shop at Caratal and told Copper if he saw James, he was going to “storm him” (give him a stern warning).
James entered the shop as Clarke was exiting.
Clarke approached James, who started “cursing and telling me about my mother c**t and I punched him in the face.
“Then he left looking for something to hit me and came back with a Hairoun bottle in his hand and I took it and hit him with it.”
Clarke said someone told him not go to the police because James was on a bond and could have been imprisoned for breaching the bond.
He said James left the shop saying he was going for his gun and he (Clarke) went home.
Jacobs adjourned the matter to the following week for sentencing and placed the defendant on bail in the sum of EC$2,000 with one surety. She also ordered him not to have contact with James.