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Woman wants to exorcise ghost of past dismissed ganja case
June 09, 2022
It has been eight years since the St James Parish Court dismissed a ganja case which had been brought against Tashoya Colquhoun, but the ghost of that old matter continues to follow her around up to the present day, and she wants it laid to rest.
"The case has been dismissed for some time now, and from what I know, it would take seven years for it to be removed from my record. I went and did a police record last year, and it was not on record, but it is still on the Internet," Colquhoun, 37, lamented while speaking with THE STAR on Tuesday.
The matter, which she said has been hampering her life, surrounds her arrest on December 3, 2012, when the police reportedly found 110 pounds of ganja at a house where she was staying at the time.
According to the allegations that were placed before the court, at approximately 4 p.m. on the day in question, a police officer went to a house in the Norwood community in St James to execute a search warrant. When he arrived at the house, he reportedly saw Colquhoun and had a conversation with her.
The officer searched two barrels at the premises and found three plastic bags containing ganja. When questioned about the contents of the plastic bags, Colquhoun denied that they belonged to her. Despite her denial, she was taken into custody and subsequently arrested and charged with possession of ganja, dealing in ganja, and using premises for the storage of ganja.
Colquhoun maintained her innocence and the case against her was dismissed on June 12, 2014, due to want of prosecution.
"The stop order imposed against Ms Colquhoun on the 14th day of December 2012 can now be lifted and her name removed from the Immigration Watch List," the court advised in a letter addressed to the Passport Immigration and Citizenship Agency on June 13, 2014, the day after the case's dismissal.
However, Colquhoun said that she experienced problems securing employment as a result of the allegations. She said that it is also affecting her efforts to secure a visa to travel overseas.
"I have had an issue where I applied for a job in 2017 and I did not get through because of this issue. The interview went well, and I did not mention the case until after they [prospective employers] told me that I am to come in, and I thought that was something I needed to put out there," Colquhoun recalled.
"When I did that, they told me they could not hire me because of the whole thing with the case. Some places do a background check, and it would come up that I was arrested," she added.
"But the most recent issue that I am having right now is that my fiance is overseas, and we want to get married. He spoke to a lawyer less than a month ago regarding the matter, and the lawyer advised him that it is going to be an issue because when they do the background checks, they might turn me down."
All Colquhoun wants is for her past arrest and court history to be put to sleep and not be persistent obstacles in her moving on with her life.
