Barbados Today

A repeat offender was today sentenced to nine months behind bars for theft.

Damien Debarge Wilkinson, 31, of Jordan’s Lane, The City, recently pleaded guilty to entering Astride Leon’s house on September 9, 2016 and stealing a laptop valued $800, four pairs of earrings valued $360, a $30 pendant, a $70 ring and $50 in cash.

The unemployed man also admitted to stealing a backpack valued $100 and an $80 skateboard belonging to Brandi Wommack.

He denied the charges when he first appeared before Magistrate Douglas Fredrick in September last year.

However, he had a change of heart when he appeared before Magistrate Kristie Cuffy-Sargeant.

Sergeant Janice Ifill read the facts of his crimes in court this morning.

She reported that Leon secured his home and left, but on his return discovered the mentioned items missing. The robbery was reported to police and investigations led to Wilkinson.

When he was apprehended, he admitted to the crime. The jewellery and laptop were recovered, but the cash was not. Wilkinson told police he had used the money for bus fare.

The backpack and the skateboard were taken from near Wommack’s garage. Wilkinson had also allegedly attempted to take a bicycle but soon realized the tyres were flat.

The thief took the other two items, jumped over the wall of the property, threw away the skateboard and the items in the backpack, but kept the backpack.

He then boarded a minibus.

However, after the matter was reported, lawmen stopped the vehicle, detained Wilkinson and took him back to the crime scene.

“I come up hard and ting. . . . I lost my whole family in a house fire and life has been hard since 2003. [That’s when] I got into drugs. I have been asking for help,” Wilkinson told the court today, when asked whether he anything to say.

However the magistrate told Wilkinson that he needed to make a commitment to himself in order to get the help he desired.

“I come out of jail and have nothing to eat, so I had to steal. I try to help myself already,” he responded.

The magistrate maintained that the commitment had to first “come from within” if Wilkinson wanted to turn his life around.

“You can talk the talk, but you must walk the walk. It must start with you,” she told him.

Cuffy-Sargeant then imposed two nine-month prison sentences on Wilkinson to run concurrently, with the time spent on remand deducted from that period.