ASKED to explain how he knew a pair of slippers belonged to a man who was arrested for having six kilogrammes of marijuana in his possession for the purpose of trafficking, police constable Roger Nicholas said the slippers fitted Ainsley Ayers perfectly.

It was one of the things Ayers was asked to account for while being cross examined by defence attorney Wilston Campbell in the Third Assize Court in San Fernando yesterday.

It was put to Nicholas that Ayers, a 27-year-old joiner, was arrested while he was in a dasheen bush patch cutting leaves for his grandmother, when he and other officers went to Lance McDougal Trace in Basse Terre, Moruga, on the morning of December 11, 2002. Nicholas said Ayers was arrested in his house, which was kept under surveillance by police officers for about two weeks.

Campbell put to Nicholas that Ayers was not living at that house, which, according to Campbell, belonged to Ayers’s parents, but at his grandparent’s home a short distance away.

The attorney said he was instructed by Ayers that he never slept a night at any other house other than the one his grandparents lived in and where he grew up.

’I don’t know where he grew up,’ Nicholas said.

’But I was very satisfied in my mind that he lived there. That is why the search warrant was taken out in his name. In addition, he had clothes there.’

Campbell asked: ’How do you know the clothes were his?’

’On his arrest, the accused asked for an opportunity to put on a jersey because he was barebacked. He also asked for his slippers,’ Nicholas said.

’How do you know the slippers was his own?’ Campbell asked.

Nicholas replied: ’What I could say is that it fit him perfectly sir.’

Led in his evidence in chief by State attorney Nizam Khan, Nicholas said he and other officers attached to the Moruga Police Station went to Ayers’s home to execute a search warrant for illegal arms and ammunition.

He said a search was carried out in Ayers’s presence and, in a bedroom, a scale and a quantity of plant material was found on a bed. The nine-member jury with three alternates heard that Ayers allegedly told the police officers: ’Boss ah sorry. Is just a lil hustle ah making. I is ah poor man.’

He was arrested and taken to the Moruga station where he was charged. The trial continues today.