A major court hearing for a former security company employee who pleaded guilty to conspiracy in a 2015 aggravated burglary has hit a delay, after a judge rejected outdated medical evidence submitted by the defense and ordered new documentation and witness testimony from treating physicians.
Forty-five-year-old Morivia Samantha Syana Gittens, a resident of Haynesville in St. James, previously entered a guilty plea to charges that she conspired with an unidentified man to carry out the burglary at her former workplace on September 1, 2015. Her sentencing was originally scheduled to take place this Wednesday at the No. 3A Supreme Court, but the proceeding was put on hold after Gittens’ defense attorney, Sian Lange, submitted medical records from the Queen Elizabeth Hospital outlining multiple serious respiratory and other chronic conditions that Gittens is living with.
The records provided included a patient discharge note and a formal assessment from the hospital’s respiratory unit, but all documentation was dated back to April of this year. Justice Anthony Blackman, the presiding judge in the case, ruled that the information was not current enough to inform his sentencing decision. He ordered the adjournment, pushing the sentencing (and any potential examination of the treating doctors) back to October 28.
“The matter will be adjourned until October 28 to hear from the doctors and possibly make sentencing remarks on the same day,” Blackman stated during Wednesday’s hearing.
The prosecution is being handled by Principal State Counsel Joyann Catwell and acting Senior State Counsel Treann Knight. Court testimony has already laid out the full sequence of events that led to Gittens’ arrest and guilty plea. According to court records, after the burglary took place, Gittens cooperated with investigators and led them to her home, where officers found a hand-drawn sketch of the security firm’s ground-floor office layout. A circular mark was placed on the drawing to indicate the location of the firearms storage drawer.
When questioned about the sketch, Gittens told police that the man she conspired with had drawn the layout while staying at her home. In her official statement, she recounted that when she asked him what he was planning, he admitted he was organizing a robbery. Gittens claimed she initially told him the plan would not succeed, but ultimately cooperated after he pressed her for details about the office layout, security protocols, and the location of cash and weapons. She acknowledged that she confirmed guns were stored in the office, told him that the cash-in-transit supervisor took all office keys with him when he left each day, and marked the exact location of the gun drawer on his sketch.
On the night of the burglary, Gittens was working alone at the office. She told investigators that she and her co-conspirator exchanged two phone calls before the robbery. Around 11:55 p.m., the doorbell rang, and when Gittens answered the intercom, a man claiming to be dropping off a sick leave note requested entry. Gittens buzzed him in, and two masked men in hoodies rushed inside. One man held Gittens in the entryway while the second moved to the back of the office to steal the pre-marked weapons. After the men grabbed the stolen property and fled, Gittens contacted her supervisor and local law enforcement.
During her police interrogation, Gittens admitted that she was aware the men were coming to rob the office, but claimed she was forced into cooperating. She acknowledged that she had told the co-conspirator how to avoid detection by the office security cameras, confirming her advance knowledge of the plan. When asked why she agreed to participate in the crime, Gittens cited overwhelming personal debt, including money she owed to a local business, a credit union, and her landlord.
Lead investigator Sergeant Leroy Willoughby told the court Wednesday that law enforcement has recovered all four firearms stolen during the burglary, along with two stolen bulletproof vests and three holsters. However, 33 of the 78 rounds of stolen ammunition have not yet been recovered, and remain unaccounted for.
The case will resume late next month when the court receives the updated medical evidence, after which Justice Blackman will hand down his formal sentence.