Cashier granted bail; two porters remanded in supermarket theft

A 29-year-old cashier has been grant­ed $85,000 bail while two Venezue­lan na­tion­als were re­mand­ed in­to cus­tody af­ter they ap­peared be­fore the South B Mas­ters Court charged with lar­ce­ny ser­vant in con­nec­tion with the theft of al­most $19,000 worth of goods from a Mara­bel­la su­per­mar­ket.

Jami­la Sim­mons, of Cof­fee Street, San Fer­nan­do, ap­peared be­fore Mas­ter De Sil­va on Wednes­day, where she re­served the right to plead. She was grant­ed bail in the sum of $85,000.

Her co-ac­cused, Eli­sio David Sanchez Malave, 31, and Fabi­an Jose Man­zano, 35, both Venezue­lan na­tion­als em­ployed as porters at the su­per­mar­ket, plead­ed guilty to the charges. Bail was de­nied and the pair was re­mand­ed in­to cus­tody.

The mat­ter was trans­ferred to the San Fer­nan­do Dis­trict Court and is sched­uled to be heard on Au­gust 11.

Ac­cord­ing to po­lice, the charges stem from an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the re­moval of mer­chan­dise val­ued at $18,941.65 from a su­per­mar­ket in Mara­bel­la.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors said the in­quiry be­gan af­ter the su­per­mar­ket’s man­ag­er de­tect­ed dis­crep­an­cies in the store’s in­ven­to­ry be­tween Ju­ly 1 and Ju­ly 6.

The man­ag­er sub­se­quent­ly re­viewed the es­tab­lish­ment’s closed-cir­cuit tele­vi­sion (CCTV) footage and al­leged­ly ob­served the three em­ploy­ees re­mov­ing mer­chan­dise from the su­per­mar­ket with­out au­tho­ri­sa­tion.

Po­lice said the items in­clud­ed per­son­al care prod­ucts, al­co­holic and non-al­co­holic bev­er­ages, and gro­cery items.

A re­port was made to the Mara­bel­la Po­lice Sta­tion, prompt­ing an in­ves­ti­ga­tion. Of­fi­cers in­ter­viewed wit­ness­es, re­viewed CCTV footage and lat­er ar­rest­ed the three em­ploy­ees.

Fol­low­ing the com­ple­tion of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion, a file was sub­mit­ted to the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice’s Head Le­gal. In­struc­tions were sub­se­quent­ly giv­en by Su­per­in­ten­dent Phillip to charge all three ac­cused with lar­ce­ny ser­vant.

The in­ves­ti­ga­tion was led by PC Ram­sar­ran un­der the su­per­vi­sion of In­spec­tor Boodoo and Act­ing Sergeant Suli­man.

Lar­ce­ny ser­vant is an of­fence in­volv­ing the theft of prop­er­ty by an em­ploy­ee from an em­ploy­er. If con­vict­ed, of­fend­ers may face fines, im­pris­on­ment or both, de­pend­ing on the cir­cum­stances of the case.