Tim Dailey will serve seven years in prison for robbing Brewley’s Superette in Purcell Estate at gunpoint in September, High Court Justice Vicki-Ann Ellis ruled last Thursday.
Mr. Dailey, 22, pleaded guilty to robbery and unlawful possession of a firearm with criminal intent in May. His four-year sentence for the latter charge will run concurrently with the seven years imprisonment for robbery.
The maximum sentence for the crime is life in prison, but Ms. Ellis said Mr. Dailey’s quick guilty plea and show of remorse helped lessen his punishment. She also said she thinks Mr. Dailey can be rehabilitated into a productive member of his society by the time he is released.
On the night of the incident, Mr. Dailey allegedly entered the store and instructed the cashier to open the cash register and hand over its contents.
The superette worker, however, thought his gun was a fake and refused to open the drawer. Instead, she pulled out a machete and lunged at him, according to Senior Crown Counsel Valston Graham.
That’s when Mr. Dailey allegedly stepped back and fired a round into the store’s glass refrigerator door, causing the woman to flee. Mr. Graham said the man pressed the eject button on the register and stole all the money inside it before fleeing.
He was arrested later and fingerprinted, and his prints matched the ones lifted from the cash register by Detective Forbes Washington, the prosecutor said.
Mr. Dailey told the court in May that he committed the crime because he needed to feed his daughter.
He has been on remand since his arrest, and that time will be subtracted from his sentence.