An Albouystown man, who beat and stabbed an elderly shopkeeper while attempting to rob him and then tried to blame it on being drunk, was yesterday jailed for five years.
Principal Magistrate Melissa Robertson-Ogle ordered that Edward Narine, 29, called ‘Dogmouth’ serve consecutive terms of two years for attempted armed robbery and three years for felonious wounding, after he pleaded guilty to the charges at the Georgetown Magistrate’s Court.
Police Prosecutor Denise Griffith told the court that on the night of January 21, Narine went to Dennis Foo’s cake shop in Albouystown ostensibly to buy a cake and a bottle of drink. As Foo started to serve him, Narine grabbed Foo by the neck and pushed him to the ground. He then started to cuff him about the body and used a spoke from a bicycle wheel to stab him in the head, demanding cash all the time.
Foo managed to raise an alarm and Narine ran away. However, public-spirited citizens who responded to the shopkeeper’s cry for help captured him and took him to the police station.
Foo, 67, arrived at court yesterday visibly battered, with lacerations to his hands and face, his forehead bandaged above his right eye and a black and blue left eye, which he says he cannot see out of at the moment.
Narine of 52 James Street, Albouystown and a labourer at city markets, told the magistrate that he was drunk at the time he committed the crime and asked her to be lenient with him, since he was the sole supporter of his mother.
Magistrate Robertson-Ogle in turn asked him if he would want someone to do what he did to his mother.
He replied in the negative and once again blamed his behaviour on alcohol.
The magistrate told him that he could have received life imprisonment if the matter had been tried in the High Court. She then sentenced him to two years in prison for attempting to commit robbery under arms and three years for felonious wounding; a crime, which she said carried up to six years at the Magistrate’s Court.