Barbara Gayle, Staff Reporter

Two security guards who, while employed to Guardsman Armoured Ltd., held up two other security guards at gun-point in March 2005 and stole more than $150,000 from their employer's armoured vehicle, have had their prison sentences reduced from 27 years to 17 years.

Harvey Green, 36, of a Bay Farm Road address in St. Andrew and Copeland Samuels, 46, of Waltham Park Road, St. Andrew, had appealed on the grounds that the sentences were manifestly excessive.

They pleaded guilty in January this year in the St. Ann Circuit Court to charges of illegal possession of firearms and were sentenced to ten years imprisonment. They pleaded guilty to robbery with aggravation and were sentenced to 17 years imprisonment. The judge ordered that the sentences should run consecutively.

Concurrent sentences

Attorneys-at-law Leroy Equiano and Kenneth Ferguson, who represented the men on appeal, argued Tuesday that the sentences should have been concurrent instead of consecutive, because the men had pleaded guilty. The Court of Appeal agreed and ordered that the sentences should run concurrently.

The case arose from an incident on the night of March 2, 2005, when the team of four security guards - including Green and Copeland - collected a quantity of cash from the Guardsman office in Ocho Rios. They were in the process of transporting it to Kingston when Green and Copeland held up the other two security guards at gun-point and stole the money.

Reports are that, on reaching a section of the Haddon main road near Walkerswood, the guard travelling in the front seat of the vehicle held up the driver while his accomplice travelling in the rear disarmed the crew master.

They were later joined by two men travelling in a motor car, one of whom took charge of the armoured vehicle and drove it on to a section of the Windalco property with the car travelling behind.

When the vehicle came to a stop, the driver was handcuffed to the steering wheel but the crew master managed to jump from the vehicle, escaping into the dark woodland.

A large quantity of cash was stuffed into the car in which all four men escaped. The armoured vehicle was later found with $30 million in cash and a manhunt was launched for the two guards who were taken into custody last year.

barbara.gayle@gleanerjm.com