A young employee of an airport handling service has been charged in connection with the cocaine in crème liqueur drug bust at the JFK Airport in New York last December.
Keon Duncan, 18, pleaded not guilty to the charge which alleges that on December 5th, 2014, at the Cheddi Jagan international Airport, he conspired with persons known and unknown to him to traffic a quantity of cocaine.
According to the particulars of the charge read in a city court yesterday, a local investigation was launched after Raphael Armstrong had been intercepted at the JFK Airport with two bottles of crème liqueur, which were said to have contained 2.88 kilogrammes of cocaine.
Duncan, who was at the time employed by the Timehri Handling Service as a customer representative, was held after being caught on camera wheeling a wheel chair to the washroom. The wheel chair was suspected to have been used as a guise for the two bottles of crème liqueur to be handed over to Armstrong.
Representing the young man, attorney Leslie Sobers argued that because the cocaine had not been quantified in the conspiracy charge against his client, its leaves doubt in the mind of the court as to what exactly was trafficked.
Sobers also related that Duncan is not a flight risk and had every intention of attending court to clear his name.
But Prosecutor Bharat Mangru argued that the cocaine was not quantified in the charge against Duncan because he was charged with conspiring to traffic the cocaine and not trafficking the drug.
Duncan was eventually remanded to prison by Magistrate Fabayo Azore and he is expected to make his next court appearance before Chief Magistrate Priya Sewnarine-Beharry on May 27th.
