By Sandra Downes
Magistrate Jared Richards assured an accused man on Wednesday that no damages will be paid to him “as a result of injuries which came about because of your own doing”.
He was responding to a question from Shawn Shakeel Shepherd, 33, a home health aide from New York, who was in the dock of the District “A” Traffic Court. He, along with Ajani Shaw, 36, a security guard, also from New York and who stays at The Grotto in Dalkeith, St Michael, when he is in Barbados, confessed to assaulting Michael Thompson on July 31 and causing him actual bodily harm.
Shepherd also admitted to intentionally damaging a shelf belonging to ANSR Investment Limited, or was reckless as to whether it would be damaged.
When they first attended court last week, the men were granted $2 500 bail, their passports confiscated and ordered to return to the court on Wednesday.
The court heard that Thompson is a security officer who works at ANSL Investments Limited in Worthing, Christ Church. On the date, he saw two men and a woman enter the automart and one of them (Shepherd), who appeared intoxicated, took up a doughnut and started eating it in the store.
Thompson went over and told him he was not allowed to do so and that it was a pay-first system. Shepherd started misbehaving and answering loudly. He continued to do so and Shaw joined in at this point.
Shepherd then went and sat on a refrigerator which stored ice cream. Again the guard went to him and instructed him not to sit there. Shepherd got up, walked over to a shelf and leaned over on it. The shelf broke.
Thompson went to Shepherd once more, this time informing him that he would have to pay for the shelf. Both visitors began cursing and became extremely boisterous, and as Thompson was escorting the men outside, Shaw punched him. The guard and Shaw started fighting but then Shepherd joined in and both men started hitting the guard about the body.
Magistrate Richards ordered the men to pay $2 470 in compensation to the store owner, to cover the $2 220 quoted for repairs to the shelf, and for soft tissue injuries which Thompson sustained.
He told the two: “You have gone through a little ordeal in a foreign country. I hope cooler heads can prevail when next you are faced with a situation like this . . . . In Barbados we have a saying that ‘trouble don’t set up like rain’.”
He gave the visitors, who come to Barbados regularly, a reprimand and discharge, and explained to them that it meant they would have no criminal record.