Duo charged for attempted murder & robbery

By Leroy Smith

Both of the young men who robbed an Accountant and then led the police on a dangerous high-speed chase around the city before being caught on Wednesday (December 14, 2016), today (Tuesday, December 20, 2016) appeared in court before Magistrate Faith Augustine.

Jason Howard and Curtis Vasconcellos were on Tuesday jointly charged with attempted murder and robbery under arms committed on December 14, 2016. They were remanded to prison until January 12, 2017, when they will appear in before the Chief Magistrate.

The court heard that on Wednesday, the two attempted to murder Baldwin Persaud on Main Street in Georgetown when they relieved him of a bag containing $2.5M which he had just withdrawn from a city bank, among other items.

Baldeo, an Accountant attached to the Tower Suites was on that day robbed by Vasconcellos and Howard of $2.5M, one haversack, one calculator, one mobile phone, one cheque book, one hard drive and one perfume.

While Vasconcellos was represented by Attorney-at-Law, Dexter Todd who told the court that his client’s rights were violated as he was prevented from seeing his family, Howard was not represented.

Todd also said that his client advised him that he also suffered abuse at the hands of police and he has been shifted around to various police stations in an effort to avoid the possibility of his family seeing him while he still had visible marks of violence.

Last week Wednesday, after robbing the Accountant and discharging rounds at a security guard, the two fled the scene but were chased by the police. They were eventually cornered on the Front Road where they plunged into trench and also tossed the loot and a weapon into the trench to conceal same from the police.

A search for that weapon came up empty-handed even as the loot from the robbery was all recovered. On that day, they had also fired several shots at the police who returned fire but no one was injured.