An employee of a shipping company yesterday said accused Corrie MaCauley Brathwaite was the customs broker for goods that came from overseas, but the consignee’s name on the documents was Errol Phillips.
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Lana Hinds, operations manager at EHS Freightliner, was testifying in the illegal gun and ammunition case against three men in the No. 3 Supreme Court yesterday.
Warren James Husbands, of Fitts Village, St James; Martez Davidson Hackett, a mechanic, of Jackson Tenantry Road, St Michael, and Corrie MaCaulay Brathwaite, a customs broker, of Dash Valley, St George, are accused of having 18 firearms in their possession on September 24, 2013.
The weapons are four Glock pistols, three Taurus pistols, one Springfield Armoury USA pistol, two Bersas, a SIG Sauer pistol, a Hersal, one Parra Ordnance, a Ruger, a Sturm Ruger, one SIG Arms pistol, one Smith & Wesson revolver and a Smith & Wesson pistol.
The three also denied having 647 rounds of ammunition on that same date.
Hinds said that back in 2013, when she was a customer service coordinator at the company, she released documents to Brathwaite on September 23. She said she knew him because he had conducted business with the company for about 20 years.
The witness explained that once a broker enquired about documents for a consignee, her company would pull them from the file; those documents would be signed and dated by the broker.
“Once a broker comes to clear a shipment for a consignee, we proceed to release the documents. Back then we used to just
go by the word of the broker,” she said, adding the broker did not “need to present me with anything”.
When cross-examined by King’s Counsel Ralph Thorne, who is representing Brathwaite in association with attorney Simon Clarke, the witness said the transaction that day was “standard procedure”.
She said the goods came by sea from the United States. When they landed at the Bridgetown Port, they would have been sent to the company’s warehouse.
Hinds said the shipping company did not investigate the contents of shipments. That, she added, was the duty of the Customs Department and was done by a Customs officer in the presence of the consignee or customer.
“Once the goods are cleared for release, the documents would be stamped, presented to the warehouse clerk who would then deliver them to the trucker.”
She said she knew the name Fabian Alleyne and he was a trucker.
“Once the goods were taken away, the role of Eric Hassell ends,” she said. (HLE)