Police testify in gun and ammo trial

Renaldo Antonio Husbands’ gun and ammunition trial continued in Supreme Court No. 5 on Tuesday with several police officers giving evidence.

Sergeant Halton Springer read from the accused’s statement, made on October 10, 2013, and his subsequent interviews.

According to the statement, Husbands went with another man – identified in the statement as X – to an abandoned house in his Farm Garden, St Philip neighbourhood where he knew men had stashed a nickel and black .380 gun. He picked it up and put it in his pocket before he and the other man headed to Six Roads in the same parish.

Husbands gave the gun to X who put it in a haversack before they caught a bus and headed to the Ivy, St Michael. When they arrived, Husbands took back the gun from X and put it in his pocket before going by his mother to collect clothing. After they left there, they went by a man in the Ivy, called Bertie, telling him, “We come for the thing”. X was then handed a white plastic bag. The accused asked him to check “if that was the gun he come for” before X put it in his bag and they left.

While they were at the bus stop, X told Husbands to give him back the gun he previously took and he placed it in the bag with the other firearm he had collected from Bertie. Moments later, two police vans pulled up and held the two men before searching the bags and finding the weapons.

When showed the black and silver .380 firearm and the magazine during one of his interviews with police, Husbands said: “That is the .380 device and the clip I was walking about in the Ivy with that morning.”

Husbands also told the police that he spoke to a lawyer his mother had sent and that they could question him. He took police to an area in the Ivy and said, “That is where I take the gun from X and I gave it back to him right there later.”

Objecting to all the oral statements attributed to him in the police reports, during cross-examination, Husbands put it to the police officer that he had been beaten and forced to confess to having two firearms and ammunition.

“Did you beat the accused?” Husbands, who is representing himself, asked the police witness.

Springer denied this.

“Did you wrap the accused with plastic wrap? Did you put a bag on my head?”

Springer again replied in the negative.

Husbands also asked what the police were looking for when they pulled up at the bus stop.

Springer said a report had been made that two men were walking around the Ivy with guns and Husbands and X fit the descriptions given.

He asked whether there was anyone else at the bus stop and the police said a woman was also there.

Principal State Counsel Olivia Davis later closed the State’s case.

Husbands is accused of possession of a .38 revolver and a .380 pistol without a valid licence on October 9, 2013.

He is also charged with having 13 rounds of ammunition without a valid permit on that same date, but that number was reduced to seven after evidence was presented by firearms and explosives expert Station Sergeant Roger Bullard that he received only seven bullets on October 12, 2013, for examination in relation to the matter.

The trial continues on Wednesday.