PHILIPSBURG--A 36-year-old man arrested for having an unlicensed firearm in his waistband was sentenced Wednesday to 12 months.
Rafael Newton told Judge Monique Keppels he had picked up the gun from the trunk of a car parked at Princess Juliana International Airport on request of a man who had owed him money.
"My friend Xavier and I are friends from small. He told me he needed the weapon for revenge. I realise now that I made a mistake by picking up the gun," the maintenance worker at a local resort told the court.
Prosecutor Manon Ridderbeks said Newton should really have known better than to walk the public road with a loaded gun "on an island where every six weeks on average one person is being killed, usually by gunfire."
In his client's defence, attorney-at-law Geert Hatzmann pointed at the fact that Newton had spent his pre-trial detention in the old cells at the police station, which he claimed, had raised the Investigating Judge's fury.
The prosecutor admitted that in certain cases persons are still being held in the old police cells for three to four days for lack of space in the new facilities.
"This has to do with the fact that most of the new cells are currently being occupied by persons held under the Law on Admission and Expulsion (TUL) because the new facility in Simpson Bay, especially designed to hold illegal immigrants, cannot be used for lack of manpower."
This situation leads to crime suspects being released from detention by the investigating judge because the old police cells have been declared unfit for usage.
The creation of more cell space, for instance in The Box in Cay Hill or by hiring so-called prison boats could be offering some solace, but the shortage of prison guards is a remaining problem.
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