A two-time convicted felon, who was almost at the end of serving a sentence, was yesterday sentenced to a further nine months imprisonment after escaping from the Camp Street Prisons.
Anil Mc Turk admitted that on January 16, at the Camp Street Prisons, Georgetown, while being in lawful custody on conviction for simple larceny, he escaped.
When asked why he escaped, Mc Turk told the court that he was frustrated at being in prison and decided to “get out.”
“I get frustrated and I do wah I had to do,” he said.
When asked by acting Chief Magistrate Priya Sewnarine-Beharry if it was his first conviction for which he was serving time, the 25-year-old lied and told the court yes.
The Magistrate, however, remembered the prisoner from a 2005 conviction and prison sentence she had handed down to him while presiding at the Providence Magistrates’ Court and asked him the question again.
Looking at him carefully, the magistrate enquired from Mc Turk if in 2005 she had not convicted and sentenced him on a robbery charge and this time the defendant smiled and responded, “Yes my worship.”
Police Sergeant Lionel Harvey told the court that on the day in question, the defendant was sent to the Georgetown Prison Sports Club to work and sometime later he was discovered missing.
A search was then launched by prison officials and the police, who found the escapee in a Durban Street yard and he could not give any satisfactory reason for being there. He was arrested and charged.
When asked, Mc Turk said that the sentence he was serving at the time of his escape would have ended in another four months.
The magistrate then sentenced him to nine months in prison for escaping.
In handing down sentence, the magistrate explained that she had considered the fact that he had two previous convictions, that he was old enough to have known the consequences of his actions, and that he pleaded guilty to the charge, saving the court considerable time.
