A resident of Christ Church, Barbados, has received a combined $28,000 in fines after pleading guilty to illegal weapons and ammunition charges stemming from a 2022 search of his home. Ryan Timothy Andrews, a 44-year-old man living in the Sayers Court neighborhood, entered guilty pleas to two counts during a recent session of the Continuous Assizes at the No. 3 Supreme Court: unlawful possession of an unregistered Jericho 941 Smith and Wesson semi-automatic pistol, and possession of 11 rounds of unlicensed ammunition, offenses that date back to September 4, 2022.
During the sentencing hearing, Justice Carlisle Greaves handed down structured penalties for each count. For the unlicensed firearm, the judge ordered an immediate fine of $17,000, with a strict fallback sentence of seven years and seven months of prison time if the penalty is not paid. For the 11 rounds of ammunition, Greaves imposed a $1,000 fine per bullet, totaling $11,000, which Andrews must pay within six months. A seven-year prison sentence will be triggered if this portion of the fine goes unpaid.
Acting Senior State Counsel Anastacia McMeo-Boyce led the prosecution for the state, while defense attorney Shadia Simpson represented Andrews throughout the court proceedings.
Court documents and testimony detailed the sequence of events that led to Andrews’s arrest. When law enforcement officers executed a signed search warrant at his residential property, they first asked Andrews if he had any prohibited items on the premises. His first admission was small amounts of marijuana, a separate disclosure that did not result in additional charges in this case. As search operations continued, officers pressed Andrews again for any other illegal items, at which point he acknowledged he was holding an unregistered gun.
Andrews cooperated with officers, guiding them to the weapon’s location: he explained he had moved the gun from an upstairs storage box to a shelf inside an open wardrobe on the ground floor bedroom. Following his directions, law enforcement recovered a black semi-automatic pistol with an inserted ammunition magazine.
When asked to explain how he came to possess the unregistered weapon, Andrews told investigators that a third party had approached him seeking a cash loan. Per their informal agreement, the individual left the firearm with Andrews as collateral against the borrowed money, effectively pawning the weapon to him. No additional information about the unnamed person who pawned the gun has been released by authorities.
After being informed of the weapons charges, Andrews was taken into custody and transported to the District ‘E’ Police Station for processing.