Would be burglar jailed

No sympathy was given to a man with a criminal record, not by his near victim, and not by the magistrate yesterday.

Austin McDonald, 40, from Roseau, said he was guilty of entering the dwelling house of Natasha Baptiste with the intent to commit theft on June 23.

McDonald did not come to the court with clean hands. In 2013 and 2014 he was recorded as having committed theft. In 2014 and 2017, burglary was the next step.

He had himself admitted to coming out of jail in June of last year. Last Saturday, in the dead of the night, Baptiste’s daughter was sleeping in a bedroom of her mother’s one storey wall house. She was awakened by a strange noise, which turned out to be a stick being pushed through the bedroom window.

The daughter pulled the stick away, and looking through the window, apparently spotted the defendant. The daughter called out to her mother, who came quickly to see the defendant running away.

“You see you run, you can’t say I didn’t see you,” the mother said she called out to the defendant.

The following day, McDonald was picked up and taken to the Central Police Station, where he admitted to the offence.

The complainant entered the courtroom purposefully, and mounted the witness box. She crossed her arms and looked at the defendant, and the defendant crossed his arms and looked at her.

When Senior Magistrate Rickie Burnett started speaking, Baptiste put her hands behind her back and the defendant followed suit. Burnett looked for a reason from the defendant for his actions.

“Is me alone,” the 40-year-old said. McDonald said that he had nothing to eat, and that he had run out of food.

The senior magistrate asked McDonald if he realized he was hungry after one in the morning. “No well nothing ain’t dey home to eat,” the defendant said. The complainant offered her piece, intoning that her 20-year-old daughter is pregnant.

She claimed that it was not the first time that the defendant had come around her house. She said that last week her nephew had called her to look outside the window and she “see the same body.”

Baptiste heard that McDonald had then cursed her nephew. The defendant asked to be put on a bond, but this was refused. “That’s all I can ask for,” McDonald countered. “Well you can ask but the answer to that is no,” Burnett replied.

He informed McDonald that he was going back to jail. “Y’all must stop terrorizing people,” he said, while handing down a prison sentence of 12 months.