The pain in the previously fractured hand of St George man was so great that he chose to walk from his home at Glebe Land all the way to Martindales Road, St Michael in the wee hours of Sunday morning to get painkillers that the had left at his girlfriend’s house.
However, a police report read by prosecutor Sergeant Theodore McClean suggested that this was not the explanation that 44-year-old Dave Rudolph Dacosta Arthur gave to lawmen who were carrying out operations when they found him along 10th Avenue Belleville, St Michael about 4:05 a.m. on April 26.
Summarising, the prosecutor said that Arthur told police that he made the trek because “I needed to engage in coitus” with his girlfriend.
Arthur pleaded guilty to breaking the Covid-19 curfew but denied ever making any statement along those lines to lawmen at the time. He told Chief Magistrate Ian Weekes that he did tell the police that he was on his way to his girlfriend’s house but for medication.
“My hand had get fractured in a altercation. I worked at the Ministry of Public Works for 16 years. Police look like they have a vendetta against me. The cast only came off on the 20th of this month.
“I was down by my fiancé and didn’t bring my medication home with me. But my hand was in so much pain, you know when someone in pain can’t take it anymore? So I leave home to go by she to get the medication because I forget it down there.
“Police write down what them feel like. I was in real pain,” said Arthur, who is well known to the court, with a conviction card dating back to 1993.
The magistrate questioned how he had maintained his job for all those years given his convictions the most recent of which was for loitering. He spent three months in prison for that conviction.
He replied: “This is my last chance , so I begging for mercy.”
The chief magistrate made it clear that his explanation was “doubtful and shaky, shaky”.
“You ain’t sound so truthful to me. This one sound very odd to me,” the magistrate said.
Arthur’s girlfriend also made an appearance and told the court that he had injured his hand and was on painkillers but she did not know which type. “We off and on but we on right now. We now ‘greeing.” She also revealed that he was working at the ministry but he had been “let go”.
After listening to the convicted man Chief Magistrate Weekes imposed a fine for breaching the curfew on the basis of trying to save his job.
Arthur now has 16 weeks to pay the court a $3,500 fine or spend six months in prison.
