A man found with a loaded gun hidden in his trousers after he was arrested is to spend more than 14 years behind bars.

Jomari Gooden, 25, was found guilty last year of possessing a gun and ammunition, along with violently resisting arrest, after a weeklong trial.

He was also convicted on his own plea of possessing a bladed article in the same incident on September 23, 2023.

While Gooden claimed that he had taken the gun from a drug dealer in a scuffle that night, Puisne Judge Alan Richards called the story an “insult to the intelligence of the jury”.

He added: “We are all left to wonder what would have happened if you had succeeded in reaching into your waistband and managed to get hold of the loaded gun concealed in your underpants while struggling with police officers.

“They had no way of knowing it was there. You did.

“What would you have done had you managed to get hold of it? Would you have brandished it? Would you have fired it? How many dead or injured public servants would we then have been looking at?

“What were you even doing running about the streets at night with this thing in the first place?”

Mr Justice Richards sentenced Gooden to 14 years for the weapon and the ammunition and five years for the knife, ordering the three sentences to run concurrently.

He further sentenced Gooden to three months behind bars for resisting arrest, and ordered that sentence to run consecutively with the others.

Gooden was spotted by a police patrol in the early hours of September 23, 2023, and arrested after a short chase. Officers had to use a Taser on him twice before he could be apprehended.

Body camera footage showed police struggling to get Gooden — who was curled on the ground in a foetal position — to put his hands behind his back so that he could be handcuffed.

When the arresting officers were eventually able to force Gooden to stand up, he remained hunched as he was escorted to a police car.

The court heard that the loaded firearm was found hidden in Gooden’s sweatpants only after he was taken to Hamilton Police Station.

Gooden claimed in court that he had obtained the gun during a tussle with a drug dealer in the White Hill area of Sandys shortly before his arrest.

He said he had paid for $150 of cannabis, but the dealer then started walking away without giving him the drugs.

During the skirmish, Gooden claimed, he was able to seize the gun out of the dealer’s hands and escape on his motorcycle.

He said he headed towards Somerset while still holding the weapon, but stopped at Hog Bay Park “trying to think what to do next”, when he encountered the police officers.

Marc Daniels, counsel for Gooden, said that his client was unable to tell officers about the weapon because he was in pain, on drugs and struggling to breathe.

While Mr Daniels said the prosecution had failed to provide evidence that Gooden’s story was false, the jury found him guilty after less than three hours of deliberation.

Mr Justice Richards said that while he could not say for sure that the guilty verdict meant that the jury rejected Gooden’s story, he was satisfied that the excuse given for obtaining the firearm was untrue.

“The notion that, in the state you say you were in, you could or would have disarmed an armed drug dealer of his loaded gun and then fled from him, despite the fact that you had his gun and he still had your money, is preposterous,” he said.

“You were in possession of that gun for your own reasons. I cannot properly find that you were on any kind of mission that night, but there is certainly not mitigation to be found in your circumstances of possession.”

Delivering his sentence, Mr Justice Richards urged Gooden to put himself back on the right path.

He said: “There are so many better ways you could be spending your time.

“Please start listening to people who have your best interests at heart and turn away from the path they fear you have gone down.

“The author of the social inquiry report quite understandably concluded that you present a high risk of reoffending. I beg you, when you are eventually able to re-enter society, prove them wrong.”

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