‘Honest’ Bajan drug trafficker confesses to charges

After revealing everything to the police, an ‘honest’ Barbadian was charged with conspiracy to traffick drugs last week.

Timothy Bancroft pleaded guilty last Tuesday that he did, between August 4 and 7 in Lowmans Leeward, agree to a course of conduct, that if carried out would amount to the offence of drug trafficking.

Apparently, early on the morning of August 7, the Special Patrol Unit, and the Narcotics unit were carrying out a joint operation. Acting on information, the party of police officers went to a guest house in Lowmans. In room number four, on the ground floor of this building, the police met the defendant. His name, and place of birth were given, and he was taken into custody.

While being questioned, the defendant apparently stated that he was there to collect drugs, and take them back to Barbados.

Bancroft, 28 years and unemployed of Barbados, was found not to have any antecedents.

The defendant told Chief Magistrate Rechanne Browne-Matthias that it was his first time, and that he has a daughter who is three years old. He disclosed that his daughter was living with his mother and himself, in Barbados, and that he had had her since she was a baby.

Browne-Matthias asked him what route he had been planning to take the drugs back to Barbados.

He replied that he had planned to go by plane. He explained that he had got caught up with bad people.

The chief magistrate commented that he hadn’t given the police any trouble, and that he had admitted what he had intended to do.

“It would have been so much worse for you,” she said, saying that there would have been “so many ramifications.”

“You thought about not being present in their lives? Your mother and daughter’s lives?” she asked him.

“I always want to be present in their life,” Bancroft answered.

Browne-Matthias, noting that it was a serious offence, but also when it had been intercepted, said that she would impose a fine “that will reflect the gravity of the offence.”

She fined the defendant $4000, forthwith, in default of which he is to spend six months in prison.