Airport workers freed in Tobago cocaine trafficking case

Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

A se­cu­ri­ty guard and a bag­gage han­dler have been freed of con­spir­ing to traf­fic 63 ki­los of co­caine through the ANR Robin­son Air­port in To­ba­go.

An­drez Phillips, 36, of Dar­rell Spring, Scar­bor­ough, and 34-year-old Ky­lon Bap­tiste were freed of the charge last Wednes­day, af­ter pros­e­cu­tors failed to meet an ex­tend­ed dead­line to file wit­ness state­ments need­ed to ad­vance their case.

Phillips’ lawyer, Shawn Mor­ris, of the Pub­lic De­fend­ers’ De­part­ment (PDD), called for High Court Mas­ter Kim­i­tria Gray to dis­charge the men due to the un­ex­plained de­lay.

He sug­gest­ed that the po­lice com­plainant in the case did not ad­vance a com­pelling ex­pla­na­tion for why the state­ments were not filed with the case be­ing be­fore the court for over six years.

Mas­ter Gray agreed and dis­charged the duo.

The case against the men stemmed from the dis­cov­ery of sev­er­al pack­ages of co­caine in two suit­cas­es that were ex­pect­ed to be placed on a Caribbean Air­lines flight des­tined for the John F Kennedy In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port in New York in Ju­ly 2019.

The suit­cas­es, which were sil­ver and blue, were tagged with fake lim­it­ed-re­lease tags.

An Air­port Au­thor­i­ty se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cer who was do­ing a pa­trol found that the bags looked sus­pi­cious and alert­ed po­lice of­fi­cers.

Up­on check­ing, the of­fi­cers dis­cov­ered sev­er­al pack­ages of co­caine neat­ly placed in the suit­cas­es.

Phillips, a se­cu­ri­ty guard, and Bap­tiste, a Swis­s­port ramp at­ten­dant, were charged for the large drug seizure af­ter a month-long in­ves­ti­ga­tion by of­fi­cers from the Spe­cial In­ves­ti­ga­tions Unit (SIU).

Both men were grant­ed bail pend­ing the de­ter­mi­na­tion of their case.