Judge blasts man for carrying knife

Concerned by recent reports of schoolchildren being attacked and killed, Senior Parish Court judge Lori-Ann Cole-Montague remanded a man who was found in the Half-Way Tree Transportation Centre with a kitchen knife.

Nakeem Minott, 22, pleaded guilty to being armed with an offensive weapon when he appeared in the Kingston and St Andrew Parish Court yesterday.

"Let me tell you something. A public place like the transportation centre, nobody should have any offensive weapon. With what we see happening where children coming home from school and people 'jukking' them for phone and that sort of something, I take these offences very, very seriously," she stressed.

Her comments came following the deaths of two teens. Last Wednesday, Kenute Williams, a student of Papine High School in St Andrew, was shot to death as he walked to school along Liguanea Avenue in what is suspected to have been a robbery. Two days earlier, William Knibb High School student Khamal Hall was reportedly stabbed to death by a schoolmate. Cole-Montague did not mince words with Minott.

LONG KNIFE

"What you doing walking up and down with a long knife in the transportation centre? What you doing with knife in that public place?" the judge asked.

"Me never meant fi walk with it," he replied. "You never meant to walk with it? So how it deh pon you if you never meant to walk with it?" Cole-Montague pressed. Minott remained silent.

The court heard that on March 24 at 5:30 p.m., police were on duty on the grounds of the centre when they noticed Minott behaving in a suspicious manner. He was searched and a brown handle kitchen knife was taken from his right waistband.

"I don't believe in no $3,000 or 10 days' fine because anybody can find it. I'm going to remand you," she further stated, referring to the sentence indication under the Offensive Weapon Act (2001), where an offender is subject to a fine not exceeding $4,000 or a maximum of four months' imprisonment. Minott was remanded until April 4 when he is to be sentenced.

T.T.