Knife-wielding man sent to Psychiatric Hospital for assessment

Terry Orlando Grant has been remanded to the Psychiatric Hospital for three weeks for an assessment after pleading guilty to having a knife along Swan Street in Bridgetown on Tuesday.

The 43-year-old resident of 11A Patience Drive, Eden Lodge, St Michael will reappear before Magistrate Kim Butcher on September 28 when he is expected to be sentenced for having the weapon in a public place without a reasonable excuse.

However, he is also facing a charge of assaulting Jerome Mosely, also on August 30, which he denied committing.

Station Sergeant Randolph Boyce told the court that a police officer was on duty along Swan Street when she heard a commotion and saw people running out of Cherish Cosmetique.

Grant was observed with a knife in his hand gesturing toward a security guard. He was ordered, by police, to drop the knife but instead, he replied, “f**k off” and ran from the scene.

He was pursued and caught along Wharf Road.

Explaining his version of what had occurred, Grant told Magistrate Butcher that he had been a Cherish customer for the past couple of months and was not happy receiving receipts “with VAT coming down the end”.

“Even 89 cents they VATing. I have no job, I out medically unfit . . . . I gone to Cherish as a customer, enter and said ‘I hope wunna ain’t tief me today, you know. I ain’t bout dis here you know. I hope you don’t tief me’. The guard said to me at the door, ‘if you got a problem in hey go out of hey’,” recounted Grant who added that he took up a basket, went shopping, and queued for the cashier.

“The guard leave the front entrance and get in my face . . . . I was saying to the cashier ‘try and be legal in here today’ . . . . He come in my face [and said] ‘if you got a problem you got to go out of hey’.”

Grant explained that at one point the guard asked him to leave the store and he complied.

“He [was] following me, the knife start dropping out. I tek it out my waist and run out the store,” he claimed.

Grant said he had the knife on him because it was a “working weapon”.

“I use it to cut . . . breadfruits. I brought them down Swan Street for one of the vendors, which is one of my customers, which is why I had de knife in my waist all the time in the store,” he said.

When told that the court could give him the help he needed, Grant replied: “I don’t want no help.”

Making reference to the Black Rock, St Michael-based Psychiatric Hospital, Ward added: “I don’t want to go down there . . . on the A ward”.

His sister who was present told the court that the family needed help with Grant as he had a cocaine addiction.

She said he had also been getting into trouble at supermarkets all throughout the year.

The prosecutor objected to bail, saying there was a need to protect Grant and society at large.