Defendants in Brad?s hold-up acquitted, rearrested

No one was hurt, but the jacking last March of Brad’s store on Vernon Street was very much a heavyweight crime. This morning, however, the nine defendants accused of robbing the popular business establishment were cleared of all charges by Magistrate Margaret McKenzie when the prosecution announced it was not prepared to proceed. Sherwin Locke, Ryan Arnold, Kevin Longsworth, Edwin Flowers, Lawrence Longsworth, Joseph Almendarez, Aldo Ray Flowers, Brandon Smith, and a fifteen year old boy, who was allowed to skip court because of school, beat the charges of aggravated burglary and conspiracy to commit aggravated burglary when it was announced that the file against the men had not been forwarded from the D.P.P.’s office.

That was this morning. By afternoon police had rounded up six of the men and proceeded to refile the same charges against them. In addition, Arnold and Smith were charged with handling stolen goods, namely the fifteen hundred U.S. dollars allegedly found in their possession, while Smith and Flowers were charged with keeping a prohibited firearm, a sawed-off shotgun used in the assault, and burglary. This reversal of fortune was too much for attorney Michael Peyrefitte who vehemently argued that his clients had already been acquitted and any retrial would be a violation of their rights. Magistrate McKenzie, caught in the middle of the dispute, decided to go ahead with the arraignment of the six defendants, but not the missing three, and set March sixth as the date for the prosecution to respond to Peyrefitte’s arguments. As to why the office of the Director of Public Prosecutions wasn’t prepared in the first place, we are only left to wonder. D.P.P. Kirk Anderson did not return our phone call and his secretary told us there was no one in the office who could help answer our inquiry. Meanwhile, the six defendants were released on their original bail of ten thousand dollars.