A man serving a prison sentence for aggravated burglary described in court Tuesday how he and two other men, who are on trial this week, were involved in breaking into homes during a two-day spree in 2022.
James Herbert McLean and Devon Emmanuel Wright Jr. are both on trial for charges of burglary and aggravated burglary following the break-ins, the last of which involved locking the homeowner in a room and the theft of a safe.
The main witness for the Crown prosecution, Romario Desmond Brown, had earlier pleaded guilty and is serving a prison sentence in relation to the burglaries, Crown prosecutor Shauna-Kaye James told the jurors. She said Brown had told police officers that McLean and Wright had been involved.
Brown, who was the first witness to give evidence, told the jurors that he had committed the three break-ins — one on Glen Eden Road in George Town on 31 Jan. 2022 and two on 1 Feb., one on Shamrock Road in Savannah and the other on Anne Bonny Crescent off South Sound Road. He said Wright was involved in all three, while McLean was with them during the break-ins on 1 Feb.
At the burglary on Glen Eden Road on 31 Jan., Brown said Wright had picked him up beforehand and driven him to the house, instructing him to break in. At that address, he said he stole a phone, iPads, a safe and a laptop, which he later handed over to Wright.
While he was inside the house, Wright was driving around the area, “patrolling to see if police were going to come”, Brown said.
He told the jury that the following morning, Wright and McLean, who was driving, picked him up in East End in a Kia Optima car and they drove to a house on Shamrock Road. There, he said, he stole $100, a bottle of tequila and a bottle of red wine, as well as phones and laptops.
Wright and McLean, at that time, were driving around the neighbourhood, looking out for police cars, Brown told the jury. He said he handed the stolen property over to the two men.
Following that break-in, Brown said, the three of them drove to the next target — a big house on Anne Bonny Crescent. He said it looked like nobody was home, so he got out of the car, climbed over the back fence, and smashed the glass of the back door with a crowbar that had been in the car trunk.
He said Wright had told him to look for money and jewellery. While he searched rooms upstairs, he said, McLean was downstairs. Brown said he found “cameras, a couple of laptops and a couple of phones”, before seeing a wall safe in one of the rooms.
“I called for James McLean then to come upstairs,” Brown told the jurors. “He tried to use the crowbar to pry the safe off the wall but the safe was bolted onto the wall.”
After managing to get the safe off the wall, McLean put it on the floor but could not open it, Brown said, adding that he then “picked it up and threw it down the stairs”.
At that point, Brown said, the male homeowner appeared downstairs. He said McLean grabbed the man and searched his pockets to see if he had a phone, in case he tried to use it to call the police.
“He asked him where the tape was and [the owner] said he didn’t have any tape. He locked the owner of the house in the utility room,” Brown said.
He told James and the jury that Wright then came to the front of the house to help take the safe to the car. After driving to Omega Drive in Prospect, they took out the safe and hid it, covering it with palm and coconut tree leaves, he said.
The trial, which is set down for five days, is expected to continue on Wednesday with the cross-examination of the witness.
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