DEREK ACHONG

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

A 39-year-old man from San Fer­nan­do, ac­cused of be­head­ing a dog in pub­lic, will spend the next two weeks at the St Ann’s Psy­chi­atric Hos­pi­tal. 

O’Neil Fos­ter, of Pleas­antville, was sent for a psy­chi­atric eval­u­a­tion when he ap­peared be­fore Mag­is­trate Armi­na De­onar­i­nesingh in the San Fer­nan­do Mag­is­trates’ Court charged with an­i­mal cru­el­ty yes­ter­day af­ter­noon. 

Be­fore the mag­is­trate made the or­der, the charge was read to Fos­ter, who plead­ed not guilty. 

His court ap­pear­ance for the vi­o­lent death of the dog came hours af­ter Fos­ter stood be­fore High Court Mas­ter Whit­ney Franklin on charges of co­caine traf­fick­ing, pos­ses­sion of a drug ap­pa­ra­tus and pos­ses­sion of a knife. 

Dur­ing that hear­ing, Mas­ter Franklin or­dered that he be ap­point­ed an at­tor­ney from the Pub­lic De­fend­ers’ De­part­ment (PDD). 

“The mat­ters you are charged with are se­ri­ous and I would sug­gest that you get an at­tor­ney,” she said. 

The mi­cro­phone at the po­lice sta­tion he was be­ing held at had to be mut­ed dur­ing the vir­tu­al hear­ing as Fos­ter re­peat­ed­ly in­ter­rupt­ed Mas­ter Franklin with al­most in­co­her­ent ram­blings over his in­no­cence. 

“Every­thing you tell me about co­caine and the weapon, I did not have all those things,” he said. 

“I did not have that ... They (the po­lice) give me a frame case,” he added. 

Mas­ter Franklin ad­vised him that he would be able to en­ter pleas for the charges and de­fend them af­ter he re­ceived le­gal ad­vice. 

“When you get an at­tor­ney they will ad­vise you and you can put for­ward your case,” she said. 

Al­though Fos­ter had two pend­ing charges for co­caine pos­ses­sion, pros­e­cu­tor An­tho­ny Ja­cob did not ob­ject to bail as he not­ed that the cas­es were over a decade old. Ja­cob rec­om­mend­ed that he be sent for an eval­u­a­tion but Mas­ter Franklin de­clined as she grant­ed him $200,000 bail. 

As part of his bail con­di­tions, Fos­ter was or­dered to re­port to his near­est po­lice sta­tion twice week­ly for the du­ra­tion of his case. Last Sat­ur­day, videos were post­ed on so­cial me­dia of a man killing the dog with a knife at High Street, San Fer­nan­do. 

The videos drew the ire of an­i­mal rights ac­tivists, who called on the po­lice to in­ter­vene. 

Fos­ter was even­tu­al­ly ar­rest­ed on Mon­day af­ter­noon along the busy street. Po­lice al­leged­ly found a ten-inch knife in the waist­band of his pants, 14 grammes of co­caine and a pipe used to smoke it in his pock­et. 

Fos­ter is ex­pect­ed to re­turn to court on the an­i­mal cru­el­ty charge on Jan­u­ary 24. The oth­er charges are ex­pect­ed to come up for hear­ing on Feb­ru­ary 20.