Senior Parish Judge Lori-Anne Cole-Montaque decided to remand a disc jock, as he allegedly assaulted his ex-girlfriend outside the Home Circuit Court in downtown Kingston just mere moments after she persuaded prosecutors to discontinue the case against him.
It was shared in the Kingston and St Andrew Parish Court on Thursday that Tayan Powell hit the complainant to the head, after he exited the court a month ago. From that incident, Powell was subsequently charged with assault occasioning actual bodily harm, to which he has maintained his innocence. The court heard further that Powell, who is the subject of a protection order that was taken out by the complainant in March and expires in March 2025, is not to be anywhere near her or her premises. But the complainant informed the senior jurist that Powell has been walking on her street frequently.
"I have to see to it that the orders of my brothers and sisters in other courts are upheld. The orders of the court must mean something!" the judge stressed.
"I don't want to trivialise the situation but the complainant is a sort of troublemaker and as Jamaicans would say 'tek set on him because he is a weak fence.' He said he is tired of it as there was a relationship which went sour," attorney-at-law Marcus Moore submitted on his client's behalf. Judge Cole-Montaque was aggrieved when court staff related that Powell appeared before her on September 8 and is before the Home Circuit Court to answer to a charge of having sexual intercourse with a person under 16 years old.
But when he was grilled by the senior judge about the other matters before the court, Powell denied knowledge of the matters.
"I don't know anything of that," he maintained.
"He is the subject of a protection order that expires in 2025. I think it is offensive that you step out of court and in the precincts of the court, the woman is assaulted. I think it is offensive and I am not going to normalise it. He's remanded," Cole-Montaque ordered.
Powell was remanded until October 6 for further checks to be made about matters before the court as well as monies to be paid for compensation for the complainant.
