Two men who allegedly attacked a group of students as they were studying in the Botanical Gardens last Saturday and robbed a girl of a laptop computer and shot her to her left thigh were both remanded to prison yesterday when they appeared before Magistrate Hazel Octive-Hamilton at the Georgetown Magistrate’s Court.
Ade Doobay pleaded not guilty to the charge of discharging a loaded firearm. He and Odel Chase who was jointly charged for robbery under arms pleaded not guilty.
Doobay denied that he discharged a loaded firearm at Samantha Hollingsworth with intent to cause her grievous bodily harm or to maim, disfigure or disable her on April 25.
He along with Chase also denied that they on the same day robbed Hollingsworth of a laptop computer valued $300,000.
However, Chase and Doobay’s lawyer Mortimer Codette applied for reasonable bail for them on the grounds that the charges were “mere allegations” and that his clients were not in that area at the time of the incident.
He also stated the Hollingsworth had told the police that her group was attacked by two men on a silver motorcycle. He noted that neither of his clients owned such a bike.
Meanwhile, Prosecutor Robert Clement objected to the bail application stating that those were irrelevant grounds for bail to be granted and that those issues would be dealt with at the trial.
The magistrate subsequently ordered that both Doobay and Chase be remanded to prison and that they appear back in court on May 18.
Reports are that Hollingsworth, 16, of Kitty, was one of a group of students who were accosted by two men on a motor scooter – CE 4573. The men held up the teen, the police said, and demanded her laptop computer, but she struggled with them and was shot.
Acting on information, police went to a house in James Street, Albouystown and arrested two men. The brazen midday attack traumatized the group of around 15 city students.
“I fight for my computer but they ride away with it,” the injured teenager recounted at the Georgetown Public Hospital.
Covered in bruises and nursing the gunshot wound, the young woman related that she struggled with the two men, one of whom was armed, to retrieve her laptop that was snatched but she was unsuccessful. She recalled that after the men grabbed the computer they mounted a motorcycle, which she immediately climbed onto as well, but fell off after a few minutes.
The young woman told Stabroek News that she and a group of friends had decided to study in the gardens and she took along her new laptop computer.
The computer, a Sony Vaio, was purchased just last week. She related that the group was going over lessons when two men approached on a motorcycle.
The men looked suspicious, according to her, but before she and her friends could react to their presence the men pounced. She said that one of the men immediately demanded the laptop.