Bail for 5 on $90,000 coke charge

THREE men and two women were yesterday granted bail totalling $520,000 when they appeared before Mag-istrate Marcia Murray at the Port-of-Spain Magi-strates’ Second Court on separate charges of possession of cocaine for trafficking. The illegal narcotic weighed approximately 2,800 grammes and had an estimated street value of over $90,000.

Anthony McKay, 22, of Reservoir Road, La Pastora, Santa Cruz, Anton De Verteuil, 20, of 19 Reyes Road, La Pastora, Santa Cruz, Gerard Richards, 18, of Chanka Trace, El Socorro, Joanna Greenidge of La Pastora, Santa Cruz and Janet Halgreaves, 24, of Cascade were charged with possession of cocaine for the purpose of trafficking at the Port-of-Spain General Hospital between November 19 and 21. Halgreaves was also charged with two counts of cocaine possession for the purpose of trafficking at the Piarco International Airport on November 18.

De Verteuil, Richards and Greenidge were each granted bail in the sum of $100,000 with a surety to be approved by the Clerk of the Peace to cover all charges. McKay was granted bail in the sum of $120,000 with a surety to be approved by the Clerk of the Peace to cover all charges. Halgreaves was granted bail in the sum of $100,000 to cover the charge for the Port-of-Spain offence. She was remanded into custody and will appear before an Arima magistrate on Thursday, where a bail application will be made for the two other charges by her attorney, Keith Scotland.  

The five had earlier appeared before Magistrate Melvin Daniel at the Four B Court, where attorneys Scotland, Mario Merritt and Janette Sebastian had made bail applications. The matters had been stood down because the results of the tracings had not yet been available. Results of the tracings later showed that all the accused, with the exception of Greenidge, had no antecedents. The five were apprehended at the airport, where they were about to board a BWIA flight bound for England with the illegal narcotic camouflaged in a variety of coloured capsules.