Burglar pleads guilty to teefing granny’s saddle
No doubt you’ve heard stories about desperate thieves who break into cars and houses and steal expensive jewellery or electronics, only to sell the valuable items at a tiny fraction of their cost. This next story involves a variation on that theme.
Jacqueline Godwin, Reporting
Meet seventy year old Erceline Gabourel … the driving force behind Gabourel’s Horse and Carriage Company. For the past two years this spunky grandmother has been plying her trade near the Tourism Village where she has been turning a lot of heads.
Lancelot Flowers, Employee, Gabourel Horse and Carriage Company
“The tourists enjoy it. Usually on the tour we tell them that the boss is an old lady and that I call her grandma. So when they come back to pay they expect to see grandma and when they see her they hug her and they ask her a lot of stuff and she talk back to them well. I love working for this lady.”
Gabourel says she does not find the job stressful and as long as she is physically able, she will continue to work because she not only enjoys meeting people but it gives her something to do. But on Tuesday night someone took advantage of this hardworking senior citizen. This man, identified as forty two year old Ervil Neal, broke into Gabourel’s residence and stole a number of items including one of the horse’s saddles, valued at two thousand dollars.
Erceline Gabourel, Victim of Burglary
“Well I cannot feel nice about it because those are things that I use … my iron and my pot etc.”
Equally disturbing is that Neal is no stranger to Gabourel. Gabourel says she helped Neal by giving him a job to bathe the horses and clean carriages. Neal has been charged with burglary and handling stolen goods. Although not happy about the incident, Gabourel says she will continue with her work.
Police say they found Neal on Euphrates Avenue trying to sell the saddle for fifty dollars. Neal, who pled guilty to the charge of Handling Stolen Goods, was fined two thousand dollars. He has until February twenty-eighth to pay the money or spend two years in jail.
