A man imported a gun, ammunition and cannabis hidden in a TV set he'd asked a friend to bring to Bermuda for his mother, a jury heard yesterday.

David Brangman, 45, of Devonshire, denies being responsible for the shipment which entered the Island via UPS courier delivery in December 2002. Opening the case against him at Supreme Court yesterday, Crown counsel Brett Webber said officials found around ten pounds of cannabis plus a Smith and Wesson semi-automatic handgun and eight rounds of bullets in the TV set.

He explained that Brangman's friend Angela Simmons had travelled from Bermuda to New Jersey on December 10 2002 to do some Christmas shopping.

She met up with Brangman, her ex-boyfriend, while there. However, she was unable to fulfil his request to bring the TV set back for him due to the aircraft being full to capacity.The prosecutor told the jury that Ms Simmons and the friend she was visiting in the US arranged for the TV to be shipped to Bermuda along with some children's bicycles.The illicit items were detected when the TV was x-rayed upon arrival in Bermuda.Packaging on the set was later found to have Brangman's fingerprints on them, alleged Mr. Webber, who also told the court that it was Brangman who coordinated the payment of the duty on the item when it arrived in Bermuda.Mr. Webber gave no reason why the case has taken more than six years to come to court.He called Ms Simmons, a 44-year-old administrative assistant with the Mirrors youth programme, as the first witness for the Crown. She told the court she'd known Brangman for two or three years at the time of the incident, and they'd previously been in a relationship.Ms Simmons said she'd gone to New Jersey to visit a girlfriend, Jeduntee Minors.When she heard Brangman was also in New Jersey, she got in touch and made arrangements to see him. During her visit, Ms Simmons said Brangman asked her to bring a TV set home to Bermuda for his mother. She agreed because he was giving her a lift to the airport, but she then discovered she was unable to take it on the flight because it was too heavy and the plane was overbooked.Ms Simmons, from Devonshire, also told the jury she could not afford the $300 fee she was quoted to bring home three bicycles she'd bought for her twin daughters and a friend.``She therefore boarded the flight without the items and made arrangements once she got home to Bermuda to bring the bicycles over by UPS in time for the holidays.Ms Simmons explained that she made these arrangements through her friend Ms Minors, but told her not to send the TV set. She told the jury she'd mentioned to Ms Minors that she felt "funny" about what had happened with Brangman asking her to bring it home with her. Despite this, the TVset was included in the shipment that arrived in Bermuda. Ms Simmons said she told UPS that the TVset did not belong to her and she did not want to take it but they put it in her car anyway. She noticed she was being followed by the Police on her way home from the airport and she called Brangman."I asked him what did he have in the TV. I told him 'there's something wrong. I'm not crazy," she told the jury. "He told me that I'm just being paranoid."She was later arrested by the Police and asked them to record a further phone call made to Brangman, who did not realise it was being taped. The jury was played this recording yesterday, during which Brangman could be heard telling Ms Simmons there was "nothing in there" and "I don't know what you're worrying about".In answer to questions from defence lawyer Michael Scott, Ms Simmons agreed that that in the usual circumstances where a drug importer identifies a "mule" it is the importer that initiates the contact."It's clear that Mr. Brangman did not contact you?"inquired Mr. Scott. Ms Simmons agreed with this, but stressed that she'd not offered to take anything back to Bermuda for him when she got in touch with him in the US.The case continues.