Magistrate Douglas Frederick yesterday admonished a young man who assaulted his aunt by hitting her with a cutlass.
Zachery Carlo Massiah, 24, of Ellerton Housing Area, St George, admitted that he unlawfully and maliciously wounded aunt Karen Risbrook on November 1, 2025.
Prosecutor Constable Tammisha Knight revealed to the District “B” Magistrates’ Court, sitting at the Eric Holder Jr Municipal Complex, that Massiah and Risbrook resided in different houses on the same property. The two were not on speaking terms and on the date of the incident the complainant was inside her home, speaking to her children.
Massiah and his girlfriend, who were in his home, overheard the conversation and started laughing. In response, the complainant spoke louder and stressed that if any of them came through the yard and touched her, it would not be easy. Massiah then instructed his girlfriend to go outside, which she did, while he remained on his top step.
The girlfriend stood in Risbrook’s path and as the complainant passed, their shoulders touched. Soon after Risbrook felt a lash to the back of her head and on her shoulder. She looked around to see her nephew holding a cutlass, before she and Massiah’s girlfriend started fighting.
Massiah’s family members came outside, intervened and stopped the fight but at the end of it, Risbrook’s friend Kevin told her that she had blood on her shoulder. That was when she realised she had a cut there.
She reported the incident to the police and sought medical attention. Her injuries included a laceration to the right side of her back and soft tissue damage and swelling to the right side of her head, the court heard.
Massiah insisted to the court that he hit his aunt with “the flat side” of the collins (sword).
“You shouldn’t have hit her with the flat side nor the sharp side . . . You could have killed her. Supposed you had cut her neck . . . suppose she had fallen down and started fluttering; then you would’ve been here on a murder charge.”
Asked whether he smoked marijuana, Massiah confessed he started doing so at 18.
“So where do you get this marijuana from? You grow it at home?”
“No, Sir,” Massiah said, before pointing at his parents in the courtroom and adding, “You see the two of them there? I couldn’t go ’round them with nothing so! I don’t give no trouble, Sir,” he said.
Magistrate Frederick encouraged the father of two to stop smoking marijuana.
“I’m talking to you so you can see how easy trouble is to get into – and you’re in it now. But you can recover. Try and do something positive with your life.”
Massiah responed: “Just remember the name. I ain’t coming back.”
Earlier in the hearing, when questioned by Magistrate Frederick, Massiah said he was working and had attended secondary school but had no certificates.
“So you went in with none and came out with none? What you went to the people school and do for five years – eat lunch?”
Massiah explained that he had gone to the Skills Training Programme since leaving school.
The magistrate considered that Massiah was a first-time offender who pleaded guilty immediately and ordered a pre-sentencing report. Massiah will return to court on Thursday to meet with the Barbados Probation Service. (SD)
