Sentencing delayed in security firm burglary case

Sentencing has been postponed in a security firm burglary case until October 28 after a judge requested updated medical information about a former employee who admitted conspiring to commit the offence.

Morivia Samantha Syana Gittens, 45, of Haynesville, St James, previously pleaded guilty to conspiring with a man to commit aggravated burglary at her workplace on September 1, 2015.

Sentencing was scheduled for Wednesday but was delayed after defence attorney Sian Lange read medical information concerning Gittens into the record. This included a patient discharge note and a note from the Queen Elizabeth Hospital’s respiratory unit, which indicated that she suffered from several serious medical conditions. The notes were dated April this year.

But Justice Anthony Blackman was not satisfied with the medical notes, as he requested up-to-date information and ordered the doctors to appear for questioning.

He said: “The matter will be adjourned until October 28 to hear from the doctors and possibly make sentencing remarks on the same day.”

Principal State Counsel Joyann Catwell and acting Senior State Counsel Treann Knight are prosecuting the case.

The court previously heard that Gittens took officers to her home, where they saw a notepad on a table. It contained a drawing resembling the layout of the ground floor of the security firm’s office, with a circular pen mark on it.

When questioned, Gittens told police that a man staying with her had drawn the layout.

Her statement read: “I ask [the man] what he was drawing and he tell me he planning this thing. I tell him that the plan can’t work. He ask me if money does be in the office and I tell he money don’t keep in there. [He] ask me if guns does be in the office and I tell he ‘yes’ but when the cash intransit supervisor left he does carry along the key.”

She told police she had identified the drawer where the guns were kept and marked its location on the layout he had drawn. She said that on the night of the burglary while she was at work she and the man called each other twice. At around 11:55 p.m., the doorbell rang. When she answered the door phone, a man said he had come to drop off a sick paper, and she pressed the buzzer to open the door.

Two men wearing hoodies ran into the office. One held her while the other went further into the office. After the men took the items and left, she contacted her supervisor and the police.

During her interview, Gittens told police that she knew the man was coming to rob the office “but he force me”.

“I knew it was him because I told him what to do when he come in so that the cameras wouldn’t pick him up.”

Asked why she had planned to rob the security office, Gittens said: “Because I in debt and I owe [a business], the credit union and rent.”

During Wednesday’s hearing in the No. 3A Supreme Court, Sergeant Leroy Willoughby, who had been lead investigator in the case, said all four firearms, two bulletproof vests and three holsters stolen during the burglary had been recovered, but 33 of 78 rounds of ammunition were “still at large”.

(JB)