Best admits to drugs in speaker

A 31-year-old woman who pleaded guilty to having 253 grammes of marijuana in her possession on Monday is expected to know her fate when she returns to court on June 3, 2019.

Miriam Nakita Best of No. 26 York Terrace, Pinelands, St Michael, who also pleaded guilty to possession with intent to supply and possession with intent to traffic the illegal drug will remain on $3,000 bail in the meantime.

Acting on information police travelled to Cheapside, St Michael on April 1, 2019 where they saw Best walking with a cardboard box containing a wireless speaker. She was stopped and taken to the Oistins Police Station where the item was dismantled and searched. Taped inside the speaker was a package containing the illegal vegetable matter, prosecutor Sergeant St Clair Phillips revealed.

“I ordered that speaker but I didn’t know the drugs were in there,” Best reportedly told police at the time when asked to account for the drug which had an estimated $2,580 street value.

In mitigating on Best’s behalf attorney-at-law Mohia Ma’at told Magistrate Douglas Frederick that this was his client’s first infraction and she had not wasted any judicial time.

“She understands the error of her ways. Certain factors caused her to go [that route]. She found herself indebted to an institution trying to help a friend and that was the catalyst. She is not a drug dealer . . . she only took a chance . . . she is not using it,” said Ma’at who asked that Best preform community service as a sentence.

However, Frederick explained that while a combination sentence, which included community service maybe appropriate, the court needed to find out more about Best and “address the problem as she has everything going for her except employment”. A pre-sentencing report was then ordered on the unemployed woman.