Conditional Discharge for Olympic Medalist
This morning [Jan 19] in Magistrates Court Bermuda’s only Olympic medalist Clarence Hill, plead guilty to a charge involving the use of threatening words but was granted a Conditional Discharge for twelve months.
The charge arose out of some form of an altercation between Mr Hill and another person. The female complainant and Mr Hill were both racing to get their cars into one parking space in front of the Marketplace shop on Church Street in Hamilton later last year.
Mr Hill agreed that he was ‘hustling’ at the Marketplace. He said that he was parked across the street on the Cathedral side when a space on the Marketplace side became vacant. He said that he then rushed cross the street, got into his car, and was moving to park in the just-vacated parking space.
Just as he was backing into the space, another car driven by the complainant drove in and blocked him. Mr Hill agreed that he had then gotten out of his car, approached the complainant who had remained in her car, had exchanged words with the driver, reached through the window inside the car, removed her keys from the ignition, and tossed the keys on the passenger side seat. He admitted that his action was not correct.
Chief Magistrate Archie Warner said that the ‘gypsy cabs’ at that location were “operating illegally anyhow….” and that it would make sense for the drivers to cooperate and not fight over parking bays and spaces.
Magistrate Warner then gave Mr Hill a Conditional Discharge, explaining that Mr Hill needed to avoid committing any other offences and needed to stay out of Court for the next twelve months.
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Of all of the offences which occur on a daily basis on this little rock it really boggles the mind that the police/prosecutions would waste court time on a case like this!
As a group of people, we just get more stupid by the day.
i wouldn’t go as far as to stupid, but I agree surely better things to do with the People’s money
Sorry, but I have to strongly disagree with Malachi and Bernman. Clarence Hill is a huge man and there’s no way he should ever be allowed to intimidate a woman in this way. Apart from anything else he was operating an illegal “gypsy cab” and he was likely to continue this kind of behavour if not dealt with for this incident.
Clarence has stayed out of trouble for a long time, which is a good thing, but the Police were correct in bringing him before the Court, and the Magistrate was correct to give him an absolute discharge (to be of good behavour for the next 12 months). He admitted that he was out of order and he can hopefully move on. The Police did him a great favour.