Thief owns up after seeing CCTV

In his latest crime, King was caught on CCTV last February and earlier this month not only stealing plenty of snacks from FHL Service Station at Welches, St Michael, but also damaging the property.

King, who has no fixed place of abode, told Magistrate Alison Burke in the Bridgetown Traffic Court he was intoxicated and did not know what he had done, but admitted because the police showed him on CCTV committing the offences. Magistrate Burke, after reviewing his convictions, sentenced King to three months on each offence and ordered the sentences to run consecutively.

King’s charges were damaging a canister of gas and six locks between February 27 and 28 this year to the tune of $411, belonging to the service station, and between March 2 and 3 this year, entering the same service station as a trespasser and stealing, among other things, several chocolates, candy, popcorn and potato chips totalling $157 and belonging to Sharon Marshall.

Initially, King pleaded not guilty but changed his mind and confessed to the crimes.

“I see myself at the gas station and I believe I do it. If I didn’t went there they wouldn’t got my picture. Even the police ask me wuh I do with all them snacks but I don’t know. I was out at a party and drinking. Probably I do it ’cause I was intoxicated,” said King. Prosecutor Sergeant Ralph Rollock told the court the service station was secured on the different dates and in one instance, a worker arrived to find the glass broken and some of the display items gone. King was seen on the security cameras taking the items and he was eventually arrested and charged.

In the other instance, the business was secured and a worker arrived to find a canister of gas

damaged and the fuel dispensing nozzles pulled from the pumping station and the locks broken. The investigation revealed it was King doing the destruction.

King told the court that once he did “something I plead guilty”.

“I asking for a chance, my aunt now dead and I would like a chance to mek two wreaths and go to the funeral,” he said.

However, Magistrate Burke told King, whose last appearance in court was in 2022, that as soon as his suspended sentences time is up he commits an offence.

“You have to keep away from service stations,” she told him after looking at his record.

King has been piling up convictions over the decades going as far back as the 1990s and has, in some instances, claimed intoxication made him commit the offences.

His litany of misdeeds included stealing other gas cylinders, vitamins, a bicycle, rum, snacks and a host of other items from homes, stores and gas stations.

Some of the places King stole from are no longer in existence, including Budg-Buy Supermarket, Chubbies video stores and Texaco gas station. (AC)