Acting Senior Magistrate Carlisle Greaves on Tuesday warned a teenage mother who abandoned her baby daughter in Trimingham's when she was shoplifting that she was "going straight to hell" unless she mends her ways.

Mr. Greaves gave Gina Liburd, 17, of Elliott Street, Pembroke, a severe tongue-lashing as he accepted a report recommending she be placed on probation for 18 months.

At an earlier hearing, the court heard Liburd ran out of the Front Street store on July 25 when she was confronted by a security guard while shoplifting, leaving her two-year-old daughter inside. She pleaded guilty to stealing baby clothes worth $100.50 for another woman.

Sentencing Liburd, who is heavily pregnant with another child, yesterday, Mr. Greaves said: "You are in a lot of trouble, not with me, but with yourself.

"You're going to hell. The way you have fashioned this life on earth for you is going to be hell. You are on the way down.

"No one except your supporters has anything good to say about you. You can't even admit to the truth when you went shoplifting.

"Your mother, your grandmother, your father, are not good influences at all. They feel they have to shield all your indiscretions from others and they feel they are doing some good, but they are not doing any good.

"You can't complete school, but you are pregnant to bring a baby and trouble into this world. You're in trouble. I am not going to play with you, I am going to give it to you straight. You are going straight to hell. Your life will not be your own for you unless you change now.

"Probation are not saying you should have probation because you are nice, but because they are trying to bring some constructive contact to your life at this stage.

"I suggest to you madam that you bend the course you are taking or you are going straight down Devil's Lane. You don't seem to have anything between those two ears.

"It hurts me deeply when I see my people destroying themselves. It doesn't have to be so. We don't have to prove to the rest of the world the negative things they think about us.

"All of us have it in ourselves to be strong, but some of us seem to be determined that we remain at the bottom of the ladder. Your sisters, your father, your granny are passing it down from generation to generation."

When asked if she had anything to say, Liburd said "sorry". Mr. Greaves replied: "Sorry for yourself or sorry for what you did?"