An elderly food vendor was among two persons ordered to perform 52 consecutive Saturdays of community service after pleading guilty to drug possession in separate cases yesterday.
In the first case, food vendor Barbara Pindar, 63, of Lot 64 Broad Street, Charlestown, was charged with having nine grammes of cannabis in her possession on September 24.
Prosecutor Kerry Bostwick told Magistrate Judy Latchman that on the day in question, a party of policemen, acting on information received, went to Pinder’s Charlestown home and conducted a search. A bottle containing a quantity of leaves, seeds and stems, believed to be cannabis, was found on a table in her living room.
She was told of the offence committed and was subsequently arrested.
Her attorney Clive Forde told the court that it was the first time that his client had been placed before the court and that she was sorry for what she had done.
Meanwhile, Avril Thomas-Smith, 53, was also charged with having a gramme of cocaine in her possession also on September 23.
Bostwick, in relating the facts of the charge against Thomas-Smith, said that a party of police officers from the narcotic branch of the Brickdam Police Station were conducting patrol exercises in the Charlestown area when they went to the defendant’s home. The court was told that the police conducted a search on a cardboard box on which Smith was sitting and they found a whitish substance believed to be cocaine contained in a transparent Ziploc bag. She was told of the offence committed, arrested and charged.
The unrepresented woman also apologised to the court for having the cocaine and she too said it was the first time she too before the courts.
Both women were fined $3,000 each and ordered to perform 52 consecutive Saturdays of community Service at the Brickdam Police Station commencing tomorrow morning at 9.
They were told that national holidays will be excluded.
