BASSETERRE, St. Kitts – A 12-member jury brought a St. Peters man in guilty of Burglary with an 11-1 verdict at the Basseterre High Court on Thursday, July 1, 2010.
The guilty man, Tamboei Huggins, was charged with the April 26, 2008 offence which was committed in Ogee Village, St. Peters and will have to return to court for sentencing on Thursday, July 15.
The court was told that Huggins had stolen EC$1 200, a cellular phone and a DVD player from the home of Kendall Blanchard.
The trial began on June 30 and Huggins, who pleaded not guilty to the offence, was represented by Chesley Hamilton.
In addition to Blanchard, his girlfriend and Alton Brookes of Stapleton Village testified at the trial.
Blanchard said that he and his girlfriend were at home at the time of the incident sleeping in the living room, and he was awakened by her screams.
The self-employed man said when he awoke he saw something he believed to be a firearm pointing at him and someone saying, “Don’t move or I’ll kill you.”
Blanchard told the court that the men’s faces were covered and they placed a sheet over his head and tied him up. He further said one of the men asked him for money and he recognised Huggins’ voice, because he had known him for over 10 years.
He added that after a while he heard the door open and his girlfriend untied him.
Blanchard explained that after the men departed, his girlfriend had looked around the house to see what was missing before they left to report the incident at the Stapleton Police Station, thence to the JNF Hospital for treatment to a wound the men had inflicted to his head.
He also testified that during an examination of the home, he had noticed the screen of one his slide windows was cut, and a wallet that a friend had given him on the previous day was missing.
In his cross-examination, Hamilton told Blanchard that the voice he claimed to be that of Huggins was a mistake.
In her testimony, Blanchard's girlfriend said that she knows the accused by face and recalled seeing him twice before the incident.
She said that on the night of the incident, she and Blanchard had returned home from dinner and was viewing some programmes on the television before he fell asleep and she subsequently “dozed off”.
She said also said that she awoke and saw a gun pointing through the window and a voice said, “Shut the f… up,” and then saw two men coming from the bedroom. She added that they tied up her boyfriend and a third man entered.
“They kept asking for the money: ‘Where the money, where the money, where the ‘effing’ money’,” she testified.
She said they told her boyfriend that if they did not give them the money they would shoot her.
The girlfriend said one of the men struck her boyfriend on his head and he told them that the money was in his pants’ pocket.
She said they did not find the money and they ordered her to go and look for it. She explained that she found the wallet in a pocket of the pants he wore that night and gave it to them. They then told her to go back on the bed next to her boyfriend.
She further said they then held a knife to her throat and told her to go outside.
“I asked them why they were doing this and they said the guy had done them something. They then jammed me against the wall and asked me for the rest of money, and I told them that was all the money in the house,” she said.
Brookes, who is a farmer, said that he had found a wallet near Huggins’ home on April 27, 2008.
He said that when he opened the wallet he saw Blanchard’s driver’s license in it but no money and he returned it to the owner.
During his closing arguments, Hamilton said that the evidence against his client were all circumstantial.
“They have nothing against him, the wallet being found outside where Tamboei lives is circumstantial. No one said they saw him with a bike…nothing is consistent with him being one of the persons,” he said.
