A mother of five who pleaded guilty to a charge of trafficking in narcotics yesterday burst into tears when Magistrate Melissa Robertson-Ogle sentenced her to three years jail together with a $10, 000 fine.
“I plead guilty. I know that it carries imprisonment but I don’t want to waste your time. Yes, I did have it,” a teary Deborah Ann Stoll, who was unrepresented in court, told the magistrate when she appeared in the Georgetown Magistrate’s Court.
Stoll, 44, of Timehri Fire Station Road, told the court that she had not known that the books she was carrying had been filled with cocaine. She was an outgoing passenger at the Cheddi Jagan International Airport, Timehri, last Friday, when she was found with one kilogramme, 818 grammes of cocaine in her possession, for the purpose of trafficking. When Magistrate Robertson-Ogle asked the woman if she needed a lawyer to advise her Stoll replied in the negative adding that she had already made her decision.
Police Prosecutor Sherwin Matthews told the court that on the day in question, around 6 am, Stoll checked in as an outgoing passenger with one suitcase on a Caribbean Airlines flight bound for Barbados.
He said her suitcase was scanned and was later examined closely by ranks of the Police Narcotics Branch who were on duty.
The drug was found concealed in the covers of two books and an album. Stoll was told of the offence, arrested and taken to the Criminal Investigation Department in Georgetown where she was later charged.
After being asked by the magistrate to explain what happened, Stoll, who said she owns a shop, said that a male friend asked her to take the books to Barbados for someone.
She explained that she met this friend while shopping at a supermarket in the city about four months ago and they went out occasionally.
Stoll said that during one of their outings she told him that she was going to visit her pen pal in Barbados and the man asked her to take some books to a friend for him.
The woman told the court that she looked through the books when they were given to her but didn’t notice anything suspicious, adding that someone was going to meet her at the airport in Barbados to pick them up.
She said that this was the first time she was going to the island and she was never suspicious about the books. “Your honour, I am so sorry” Stoll said, fighting back tears.
After handing down the sentence for the offence, the magistrate told Stoll to be wiser in the future.
