Bryant Gentle Junior multiple charges for robbery

Bryant Gentle Junior

In court today, it was a bittersweet case ending for twenty-six year old Bryant Gentle Junior, who was facing five charges that are linked to two separate incidents. Charges of Wounding, Robbery, Kept Unlicensed Firearm and Kept Unlicensed Ammunition were levied after Gentle was accused of robbing a security guard at knifepoint and injuring him in the process. The bad news came first when Magistrate Emerson Banner found him guilty of the firearm and ammunition charges and sentenced him to two years in prison. But when his alleged victim, Paul Valerio, did not show up to testify, Gentle was acquitted of Robbery and Wounding. Valerio had reported that on September second, 2010 he was stationed at an N.H.I. Clinic at the corner of Rectory Lane and Regent Street when Gentle approached him with a knife and robbed him of his service weapon. But Gentle didn’t get far in his attempt to escape because police caught up with him in an open lot nearby. He still had the pocket knife in his possession and the stolen point thirty-eight revolver was found nearby.

In court, Gentle also beat a charge of Theft which was in connection to two bed frames that were stolen from a resident of the Mile Eight community on the Western Highway. According to Raquel McFadzean, in May 2010, she saw Gentle and another man pass her house, carrying her bed frames on bicycle. The items were stolen from a house she previously occupied and McFadzean says she tracked down her belongings at a recycling company. Gentle admitted to taking the bed frames, but explained that he did it because the house appeared to be abandoned. Magistrate Banner gave him the benefit of the doubt because there was no evidence before the court regarding the owner of the items.