Taxi driver ordered to pay tourist for damaged phone

A taxi driver has to part with $2 400 after being ordered to compensate a tourist for breaking her cell phone in a dispute.

Daniel Antoine Stoute, 27, of Lightfoot Lane, St Michael, went before acting Chief Magistrate Douglas Frederick and pleaded guilty to damaging a cell phone belonging to Deanna Lettley, intending to damage it or being reckless as to whether it would be damaged, on May 4.

Lettley, a visitor to the island, met the accused while at Pebbles Beach on May 3, Sergeant Victoria Leacock told the No. 1 District ‘A’ Magistrates’ Court.

Stoute offered to take her and friends back to the villa where they were staying and later collected them to take them to various spots, eventually ending up at a club in Christ Church. They went outside to smoke when the accused began to curse and misbehave, causing the complainant to distance herself from him. He got angry and demanded payment of US$50 [$100] as his fare, and she told him that she was willing to pay the money and requested that he take her back to the villa. But Stoute refused before snatching Lettley’s phone out of her hand and throwing it on the ground.

Stoute told the magistrate: “Sir, I admit that I damaged the phone, but the young lady was being disrespectful and using abusive language and saying that she would not pay me for the work after I was taking her around for the whole day and so I got frustrated. I apologise.”

“This is the most expensive job that you are not going to get paid for,” the acting chief magistrate said, while ordering him to pay the funds in three months or face two months in prison.

“Hopefully this will not spoil their image of Barbados,” he added, adjourning the case until August 27.

(JB)