One of the teenagers allegedly involved in a fight that left a 16-year-old schoolboy nursing a stab wound appeared in the No. 1 District ‘A’ Magistrate’s Court today and was remanded to HMP Dodds.
The incident that was caught on video and was making the rounds on social media occurred earlier this month.
Seventeen-year-old Jamal Ramon Anderson Hackett, of Thompson Gap, Black Rock, St Michael pleaded not guilty to unlawfully and maliciously wounding Stephan Hoyte on October 9 but guilty to stealing an $800 cellular phone belonging to Hoyte as well as robbing Kashone Joseph of $30 on September 17.
Station Sergeant Carrison Henry said Hackett took Hoyte’s phone when it fell out of his bag during an altercation on Tudor Street on October 9. The device was never recovered while on September 17 Joseph, also a schoolboy, was walking along the road when Hackett and another person confronted him pushing him against a wall. Hackett then proceeded to hit Joseph and slapped him in the face before reaching into his pocket and taking his money.
“I want to know if I can get community service or probation, this is my first offence,” Hackett, who was self-represented, told Magistrate Douglas Frederick today.
However, the magistrate told the first-time offender that he was “ a danger to society and himself”.
“You are out there robbing schoolboys of their snack money . . . this is a dangerous enterprise and we need to find out about [you] as you are on a dangerous track,” the magistrate stated as he contemplated whether to remand Hackett so that the Probation Department could compile a pre-sentencing report on his life.
His mother who was in court asked that her son be given a chance as it was his first offence while his aunt said he needed help “now”.
However, the magistrate made the decision to remand Hackett to Dodds until November 14 after the prosecutor revealed that Hoyte had been hospitalized for his injuries and that there was a video on what had allegedly occurred.
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