Do you read your newspaper as in-depth these days as you used to a few years ago when there was nothing called a cellphone on which to spend most of your time on BBM, text, Instagram, email, WhatsApp and all the other messages that constantly pour into your hand like a burst Barbados Water Authority main?
Despite all of that technological information feeding, I still spend a lot of my time consuming much of what is printed in my newspaper on a daily basis, whether it’s local, regional or international news. And last week, two of the items that caught my attention were court reports, one from Barbados and the other from Jamaica.
The first, in Monday’s DAILY NATION, was about a Bajan man who broke into the same gas station three times, stole similar food items each time but claimed that a devil and an angel were responsible for his behaviour.
The first time he took 50 energy drinks, ten bottles of wine, three packs of biscuits and 18 packs of chips. The second time it was again 50 energy drinks, ten bottles of wine and 18 packs of chips but with 12 packs of biscuits and 34 packs of nuts. For his third haul he made off with seven energy drinks, 11 bottles of beer and five bottles of wine.
When asked by Magistrate Deborah Holder in the District “A” Magistrates’ Court No. 2 the reason for his obsession with the particular service station, the man explained that it had to do with two people who sit on his shoulder and control him. One was a devil, the other an angel and he does whatever either of them tells him to do. “This is no joke,” he stressed.
So what you do with a man who claims to be under the control of both a devil and an angel? You do what Magistrate Holder did. You send him down Black Rock for an evaluation.
So come June 10 the court will receive a report on that evaluation and, given the state of the world these days, it might just confirm that the man does have a devil and an angel sitting on his shoulder giving him instructions.
The second case was published in Thursday’s DAILY NATION and was the gruesome story about a Jamaican man who is accused of stabbing his common-law wife to death in downtown Kingston recently.
Police told the court that after committing the act, the man, apparently in a bid to end his own life, jumped in front of a passing motor car but was saved from such an end by an angry mob which then set about beating him mercilessly.
More than likely, their intention was to do unto him as he had done unto the woman in broad daylight. But their efforts were frustrated when the man was again saved from death, this time by the police, who arrested and subsequently charged him with the murder of his lover.
It was when he appeared in the Corporate Area Resident Magistrate’s Court last Monday that Jamaica got to hear what the motive for his action was.
Believe it or not but this man allegedly attacked and killed his woman for no other reason than that she had withheld sex from him for two months.
Ironically, as fate would have it, when he made his first appearance in court last Monday it was before Senior Magistrate Judith Pusey.
• Al Gilkes heads a public relations firm.
