Police officer appears in court on assault charge

Act­ing Cor­po­ral Shel­don Bak­er ap­peared be­fore Mag­is­trate Law­son in the Sec­ond Mag­is­trates’ Dis­trict Court on Mon­day, charged with as­sault by beat­ing.

Bak­er, 42, who is at­tached to the Shir­van Road Po­lice Sta­tion, was grant­ed bail in the sum of $10,000 and is due to reap­pear in court on De­cem­ber 4.

The charge stems from an in­ci­dent which al­leged­ly oc­curred around 6:30 p.m. on April 12 at Gold­en Grove Road, Canaan, To­ba­go, in­volv­ing a 26-year-old woman.

Po­lice said in­ves­ti­ga­tions re­vealed that Bak­er al­leged­ly went to the woman’s res­i­dence, where an ar­gu­ment en­sued.

Dur­ing the in­ci­dent, he al­leged­ly struck the woman sev­er­al times about the head.

Po­lice said the in­ci­dent was wit­nessed by a 12-year-old girl and was al­so cap­tured on closed-cir­cuit tele­vi­sion footage in the area.

Bak­er was ar­rest­ed on Sun­day af­ter a war­rant for his ar­rest was ex­e­cut­ed at the Scar­bor­ough Po­lice Sta­tion.

The war­rant was ob­tained on Fri­day, Sep­tem­ber 18, fol­low­ing ad­vice from the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions.

Po­lice said con­sul­ta­tions with the DPP’s of­fice were held on Au­gust 18 and Sep­tem­ber 3, with ad­vice re­ceived on Sep­tem­ber 10 to charge Bak­er with as­sault by beat­ing.

The war­rant was sub­se­quent­ly ex­e­cut­ed two days lat­er.

Bak­er ap­peared in court the fol­low­ing day, Sep­tem­ber 21, where the mat­ter was ad­journed to De­cem­ber 4.