Burglary accused claims to have been partying with friends

While the prosecution’s case seeks to place a burglary accused under the lights of a Belair house on December 24 last year, he contends he was under party lights.Prosecutor Corlene Samuel concluded her case against defendant Clete Exeter, 29 years old, yesterday, after calling multiple police officers as witnesses.

Two police officers seemed 100 per cent sure of their side of the story, that Exeter was the person that they saw burglarizing Shelford Stowe’s house on Christmas Eve, and that he was who had caused damage to the house.The reason why the two were so certain lies in their stories showing that they had nearly caught the perpetrator red handed.

The two stated that they were acting on information in the Belair area, and by a house near the cemetery they observed a man through the windows acting suspiciously.

They had stated that this man seemed as if he was searching, in an apparently well-lit bedroom of the house.He then apparently looked up, and locked eyes with the two officers in the car, who were feet away from the house.

Since the light in the bedroom was on, the curtain apparently drawn and the man was not wearing a mask, when the person looked up, the officers said they clearly saw his face.On noticing his audience, whoever was in the house bolted, and the police officers quickly got out of their car.

They entered the house through a broken front door, and saw coins on the floor of the house leading to one of the bedrooms.They were not able to pin down the person they had seen, arriving just in time to glimpse his fleeing shadow.In the aftermath, ransacked rooms and a damaged door were recorded.

The burglary had apparently occurred in the wee hours of the morning, but the police officers on another patrol on the evening of the same day, spotted Exeter near a shop in Belair. They said they recognized him from the house.

“I was very positive, and still am positive that it was the defendant that I saw in the house,” PC Toppin assured.When the prosecutor’s last witness was on the stand, Exeter indicated that he had something he wanted to tell Senior Magistrate Rickie Burnett.

He said he was out partying with his friends and so could not have been at the said house that night.

The Magistrate was confused at the timing of the revelation, asking Exeter if he just remembered that, after the officers had already taken the stand, and he had already cross examined them.He told him “you wait until they’re gone and all of a sudden you want to tell me that.”

“You want them to come back to question them about you being in party and all that?” he asked.The defendant indicated that he did, but when the officers came back they remained sure that it was Exeter they saw in the house.

Exeter indicated that he was partying for that entire weekend, starting at Treehouse in Arnos Vale, and ending with a house party in the countryside.

He asked for an adjournment to find the witnesses to his partying.He was given until May 28 to organize his two witnesses, so that they could back up his case before the Kingstown Magistrate’s Court.