CANJE river robber, Raymond La Fleur, who was freed from a murder charge last week, was sentenced yesterday to five years imprisonment, in absentia, after he was found guilty of a robbery under arms charge by Magistrate Adela Nagamootoo, in the New Amsterdam Court. La Fleur, who was described as a fugitive from justice, was on July 18, 2010 motored to Manabesie, in the Canje River, where he, being armed with a gun, robbed Marlon Clarke, alias ‘Buck Man’, of monies totalling $260,000.
Clarke, who testified, recounted to the court that he was in his motor vessel, travelling in the opposite direction when La Fleur, who was unmasked, and in company with other masked individuals, moored alongside his boat, dealt him several lashes about his body, before forcefully depriving him of his monies.
A report was subsequently made at Central Police Station in New Amsterdam, from where sleuths arrested and charge the known robber.
Meanwhile, in another case, La Fleur was recently released from prison after he was freed from a murder charge after the court ruled in his favour at the Preliminary Inquiry. The convicted felon was one of four prisoners implicated in the murder of fellow inmate Sebastian Clata, who was allegedly beaten whist asleep at the New Amsterdam Prison, in June 2011.
Clat, who sustained head injuries, was rushed to the New Amsterdam Hospital where he was admitted before being transferred to Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation, where he died in the High Dependency Unit.
The now deceased had faced a joint charge of the 2007 murder committed on Nizamudeen Khan, a security guard, who was attached to a Rosignol Sawmill.
La Fleur has other matters of similar nature pending at the Magistrate Courts in Berbice.