News

Deportee held at airport

By PAUL A. REID, Staff Reporter

Western Bureau

A DEPORTEE WHO tried to get back to the United States with forged documents was last week Tuesday fined after pleading guilty in the Montego Bay Resident Magistrate's Court for uttering forged documents.

Rondale Smythe of Mamee Bay, St. Ann, and who spoke with a strong US accent, was arrested at the Sangster International Airport on May 18, after uttering a forged United States Virgin Island birth certificate and a North Carolina state identification card for a flight to the Bahamas.

Smythe, the court heard, had gone to the Air Jamaica counter at around 10:30 a.m. to be processed for the flight when the irregularities were found out and the immigration police called.

The accused man told the court he was deported from the United States in October last year for violating probation for drug charges after living there since 1980.

The 34-year-old recording engineer told the court that most of his family and five children still lived in the United States.

He was fined $120,000 or three months in jail.