PHILIPSBURG--Antonio S. Joseph (28) was sent to prison for four years on Wednesday, as the Judge in the Court of First Instance held him for one of three armed men involved in the July 24, 2015, robbery of Helena Jewellers on Front Street.
Three armed and masked men carried out the brazen daylight robbery at around 11:20am. While one of them attacked and threatened a security guard, two others entered the store threatened customers and staff and smashed in counters and showcases with hammers. An undisclosed amount of merchandise was taken from the store.
The Prosecutor’s Office presented victim statements, video surveillance-camera images and DNA-evidence in Court as proof of the suspect’s involvement.
Blood samples were found on the smashed glass counters and on the floor inside the jewellery store. Investigations by Netherlands Forensic Institute (NFI) made a match with the defendant’s DNA, after which he was taken in and arrested on October 22.
Joseph, however, maintained his innocence and said he had never been near the scene of the crime that day. He said he had been “fixing” a car speaker for a friend, who lived near his mother’s house in Fort Willem.
He said he had injured a finger while handling a hammer. He told the Judge he was walking to his mother’s house with the hammer in his bleeding hand when he was confronted with a man who asked him if he could buy his hammer for US $100.
He claimed he had sold the hammer to Xavier Mauricia, who was shot and killed at the bar at the entrance of Welgelegen Road in Cay Hill on October 9, 2015.
Prosecutor Nanouk Lemmers said she was convinced that Joseph was the “very tall and sturdy man,” who was among the three robbers. She dismissed the defendant’s accounts as being impossible. “He put the blame on a dead guy,” the Prosecutor added, calling upon the Court to sentence the defendant to five years, with deduction of 104 days already spent.
Attorney-at-law Shaira Bommel contested the evidence as presented by the Prosecutor and said there was insufficient evidence for a conviction. The lawyer said the victims had not made any statements about her client and the camera images were vague. Bommel accused the Prosecutor’s Office of bias against her client. She said the prosecution was “suffering of tunnel vision” in this case.
She said the defence had urged investigations into her client’s Global Positioning System (GPS) on his iPhone, which could have established his whereabouts at the time of the robbery, but such investigations had never been carried out.
There was no other evidence against her client except for the blood samples, the lawyer stated. “But, finding a trail of blood alone does not mean you have found a perpetrator,” Bommel said.
Considering all evidence presented in this case including the defendant’s own statements about the bloody hammer, the Judge found theft with violence proven.
Attorney Sjamira Roseburg, who was also part of the defence team, said Joseph had filed for appeal immediately after the verdict.
