Trio sentenced for abducting taxi driver, armed robberies

Three men were on Monday sentenced to a total of nine years imprisonment each after they were found guilty of two counts of armed robbery and abducting a taxi driver back in August 2022.

Those sentences are: Rawle Franklin called “Mad Max” and “Rawle Dog”; Emmanuel Hale, 18; and Hamza Samuels called “Bad Coolie”, 32, both residents of ‘B’ Field Sophia.

The trio were found guilty of three charges.

The first charge alleged that Hale and Samuels, on August 18, at Ogle, East Coast Demerara while being in the company of others, robbed Madan Ramdeo of a cell phone and cash totalling $73,000.

It is further alleged that on the same date, at Red Road Sophia, they robbed Jenny Mingo of $293,000 in items.

The third charge alleged that also on the same date, at Vryheid’s Lust, ECD, they robbed Joshua Singh of his $1.7M Allion motorcar, along with his cellphone and cash.

For the abduction charge, the trio were sentenced to 5 years imprisonment.

And, for the three counts of armed robbery, a five year sentence was handed down on each count. However, one year was deducted for the time they spent on remand.

The robbery sentenced will run concurrently while the abduction will be consecutive.

It therefore means that each of the men will spend a total of nine years imprisonment.

The sentences were handed down by Magistrate Rushell Liverpool at the Sparendaam Magistrates’ Court One.

The men were nabbed by police officers during a robbery spree which eventually led to them trading bullets with the police on August 19, 2022.

Two other men were allegedly involved in the incident. They are Andrew Newyear called Blackboy and Romario Hudson called Mario.

Newyear subsequently died while receiving treatment at the Georgetown Public Hospital (GPH) while Hutson was never arrested.

Franklin is no stranger to the courts. In 2017, he was sentenced to four years imprisonment after he pleaded guilty to the illegal possession of a gun and ammunition.