$.2M bail for cop, State witness

DESPITE several objections by police prosecutor Cpl Ronald Robertson, a police officer and the State witness he was entrusted to protect were yesterday granted bail in the sum of $200,000 when they appeared before a Port-of-Spain magistrate on charges of armed robbery and kidnapping. The two were also ordered to surrender their passports “forthwith.” Shortly after 3 pm PC Rikky Sammy, 37, of the Crime Suppression Unit and Burt O’Neil, 37, appeared before Magistrate Marcia Thompson Murray charged with unlawfully taking away the body of Shindell Lyons, of Waterhole, Cocorite, after robbing him at gunpoint.

Lyons, 28, was reportedly robbed of two cell phones valued at $3,600, one pack of Du Maurier cigarettes valued at $5 and $727 cash. The offences allegedly occurred on Wednesday at Mucurapo Road in St James. The two were charged by Sgt Nandram Moonilal of the St James CID. Notwithstanding that the offences are bailable, Cpl Robertson said, the prevalence of the offences and the fact that Sammy had worked “in cohort with the man he was supposedly entrusted to protect” was reason enough to deny him bail. “Your Worship, how far can we go?” he enquired. “The service has already been tarnished and is further tarnished by this,” he said. In addition, the prosecutor listed the serious nature of the offences, as well as the uncertainty of the addresses of the accused as reasons for his objection to bail.

Sammy’s attorney Om Lalla expressed shock at the prosecutor’s reasons for objection to bail.   “The matters are allegations and presumption of innocence remains in his favour,” he said. It was frightening, Lalla said, if the addresses of a police officer and a State witness were unknown to the police. He criticised the fact that the two had been in custody since Thursday morning and the prosecution still had not been able to present the results of tracing to the court.

In his earlier application for bail, Lalla had implored Murray to consider the fact that both men had qualified for bail and that their safety was at stake. O’Neil’s attorney, Ulric Skerritt, was not in court and Lalla held for him. Sammy, Lalla said, was the father of one and had been active in the Police Service up to the time of his arrest. He had no pending matters and no previous convictions, the attorney said. O’Neil had been in the witness protection programme, assisting the police in a notorious case that was before the court, Lalla said. If denied bail, he said, he (O’Neil) would be incarcerated with other prisoners, putting his life in danger. Both men were each granted bail in the sum of  $100,000 with a surety to be approved by the Clerk of the Peace. They will appear at the Port-of-Spain First Magistrates’ Court on April 22.