The court has dropped the criminal case against a man accused of robbing a grocery store and threatening to burn it down, as he died of a sickle cell disease attack before a verdict could be issued.
The 27-year-old Bahraini defendant died on September 10 in Salmaniya Medical Complex, with his death certificate listing ‘vaso-occlusive crisis’ as cause of death, a common symptom of his chronic illness.
His 23-year-old co-defendant was sentenced to five years in prison yesterday at the High Criminal Court, after carrying out multiple robberies at the store and terrorising its shopkeeper.
The two friends earlier admitted to robbing a grocery store as revenge, after the shopkeeper shared a CCTV video of them inhaling gas and ‘getting high’ inside the store, which went viral in their village of Sadad.
The younger man was convicted even though the Indian expatriate withdrew his complaint against the duo, appearing before judges and renouncing any future claims of damages against them.
The defendants admitted to breaking in to the store on the first night by shattering the glass and taking three cigarette packs, and then coming back the next day to steal six more packs.
They also broke the lock of the outdoor refrigerators to steal juice, which was caught by a security camera.
Among the items stolen from the cold store was a can of ‘extra purified butane lighter fluid’ which the defendants used, in combination with a lighter, while threatening the shopkeeper.
“The criminal case against the first defendant has been rendered invalid as he has passed away,” read yesterday’s verdict. “The defendant had been hospitalised, and the policeman accompanying him informed the Public Prosecution, the detention centre at Dry Dock and the court about his death.
“According to the policeman, the still-imprisoned defendant had been in Salmaniya’s intensive care unit when his pulse stopped, but could not be saved despite efforts by doctors to revive him.”
The ‘medical notification of cause of death’ document listed pulmonary embolism, acute right ventricular failure and vaso-occlusive crisis as the reason for the man’s untimely passing.
The latter is a painful symptom of sickle cell anaemia, which occurs when blood circulation is obstructed by irregularly-shaped red blood cells.
Hundreds of social media users commented on his online obituary, describing him as ‘a kind young man’.
zainab@gdnmedia.bh
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