Acting Chief Magistrate Melissa Robertson yesterday remanded a man accused of beating his step-father with a glass bottle.
Taxi-driver Romel Griffith, 26, of 141 Guyhoc Park pleaded not guilty to an unlawful wounding charge, which stated that on October 10 last year he unlawfully wounded Owen Young. He is scheduled to make another court appearance on February 2, in Court 10.
Griffith stated that he and Young had an ongoing problem and on the day of the incident he was just defending his sister.
He explained that Young had requested that his sister, who was pregnant at the time, remove a bicycle from bracing his bathroom. He said that when his sister failed to do so, Young chucked her. He told the court that he intervened and he and Young got into a fight.
However, Young, also present in court, stated that Griffith was the one who started the fight.
He said that he told his two children to desist from standing at the bedroom door where Griffith and his sister were, “because they are bad examples to my children.” He said that he also requested that the bicycle be removed from his bathroom but Griffith and his sister started to use abusive language to him. He said that Griffith then made a phone call and a few minutes later two men pulled up in a car at their home. He went on to say that Griffith then started to pelt him with glass bottles that were in a case in the yard.
Young told the court he then ran into his house and Griffith followed kicked down his door and dealt him several blows to his head with a bottle. He said that he then snatched a cutlass and before he could have used it the two men held on to him and told him to go to the police station.
He noted that all the while Griffith’s sister was standing in the yard with a steel pipe in her hand shouting, “Let we bank he.”
Prosecutor Stephen Telford objected to Griffith’s bail application on the grounds that both men live at the same residence and the next time they appear in court it may be for murder.