By Jeff Trotman
A woman has been ordered to reappear in the Linden Magistrate’s Court on January 6th, 2015 on a charge of assaulting the assistant to Prime Minister Sam Hinds during an APNU protest in October.
Leoni Alexander appeared at the Linden Magistrate’s Court on November 5th after she had been informed by someone who had been at the courthouse the previous day that a warrant had been issued for her arrest.
When Alexander appeared in court she was placed on $15,000 bail and placed in the holding area for remand prisoners until the bail money had been paid. She has been accused of assaulting Eon Halls, the Linden assistant of Prime Minister Hinds.
The alleged assault stemmed from a PNCR-APNU protest outside the Egbert Benjamin Centre on October 18th as Prime Minister Hinds and Minister in the Ministry of Finance, Juan Edghill met with PPP/C supporters.
The Wismar woman was arrested and charged on the 20th October after Halls had reported to the police that she had assaulted him at the end the meeting. Alexander told Stabroek News on October 21st that she was in her bed around 9 am on the previous day when she heard a loud knocking on her door. When she opened the door she saw about five police officers, one of whom was a female. She said Halls was outside her yard but “nothing like Eon Halls was in my head at the time”.
She said that an officer then explained that Halls had made an allegation that she had assaulted him. Alexander said she immediately denied the allegation, stating that she had participated in a protest and she had not assaulted Halls. She said the police then asked her to accompany them to the Wismar Police Station and she got dressed and went with them.
Stressing that she was upset that the police had entered her yard with those big guns, Alexander said: “They could have simply told a female officer or two to come at my home. But to come with all those male officers with big guns made it look as though they came for a murderer…It wasn’t nice. I didn’t like it.”
Alexander said that she was taken to the Wismar Police Station and kept there for about an hour before she was informed that it was not a Wismar matter and she was then transported to the Mackenzie Police station where Halls had made a report on the 19th October – the day after the alleged assault had been committed.
Alexander said that she had called Vanessa Kissoon, APNU MP just before leaving the Wismar Police Station and the MP arrived at the Mackenzie Police Station just before she arrived there in police custody. She said that she was placed on the bench and stayed there for some time before she was allowed to leave on her own recognizance.
She said that she was released with the understanding that she had fourteen days to seek legal advice and to submit a written statement to the Mackenzie Police Station.
Alexander told Stabroek News that she and Kissoon had telephoned the commander of the Police E Division on November 1st to tell him that the statement she was expected to submit by 4th November, had not yet been completed. She said that Commander Brutus reminded her that she had to submit the statement so that he could send it to the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) to decide whether or not the matter should go before the court. Alexander lamented that while she was trying to finalize the statement on November 4th, her “name was being called in court and a warrant was issued” for arrest.
