Convict gets four more years for gold band theft

Randy Joseph, now serving a two-year prison sentence, received an extension on his stay yesterday after he was found guilty of snatching a woman’s gold band.

Joseph, of 24 Company Road, Buxton, was sentenced to four years and eight months imprisonment by Magistrate Judy Latchman at the Georgetown Magistrates’ Courts, where he was on trial. The term will commence after he would have completed the two year sentence he is presently serving. It was alleged that on September 26, 2013, he snatched a gold band, valued at $200,000, from Elizabeth Clinton while she was in a Route 42 bus in Georgetown.

According to Police Prosecutor Vishnu Hunt, Clinton was sitting by the conductor’s seat with her hands through the window in a bid to make a purchase when Joseph, armed with a knife, snatched her gold band.

Randy Joseph
Randy Joseph

Hunt further stated that a Police Constable, who was in the area at the time, saw the brazen robbery and pursued Joseph, who attempted to run away. The constable, Hunt said,

beckoned to Joseph to stop and he did. However, Joseph took his knife and flicked it at the officer in effort to stab him, causing the officer to fire a shot to subdue Joseph. Sub-sequently Joseph was detained and taken before the courts.

The court was told that Joseph was once a member of a gang and escaped death on several occasions. On one occasion, the court heard, he managed to escape with several gunshot wounds to his abdomen. On another occasion he almost had his tongue severed.