Shizzle! Elephant Man Happy To Be Freed Of Immigration Charges
Dancehall star Elephant Man celebrated his hard-won legal victory as a two-year-old charge of making a false declaration to Jamaican immigration officers was dropped when he appeared in the Kingston and St Andrew Parish Court in Half-Way-Tree on Tuesday.
The incident happened during the height of the pandemic and put the ‘Energy God’ squarely in the crosshairs of the government and immigration authorities who alleged that he breached the Immigration Act.
“Mi give thanks, mi glad say that over. Mi just move on to the work, everybody ah foreign glad right now, so give thanks,” the Shizzle My Nizzle deejay told DancehallMag.
Christopher Townsend, the attorney-at-law who represented Ele, said he and his team expected the decision.
“Sometimes even the clients themselves may feel that they are guilty, but the law says otherwise, that’s why it is good to seek legal representation. It’s a beautiful thing when the law works as it was intended, to ensure everyone’s rights are properly respected and protected,” the high-profile attorney said.
Townsend said that there was insufficient evidence by the prosecution to convict his client, and he had requested actual video footage from security cameras at the Sangster International airport. The authorities failed to provide video footage of the alleged incident, hence the dismissal.
“The evidence that the Crown was relying on to prove its case, does not exist. The statements that were made against him did not form sufficient evidence. The Crown agreed and decided not to proceed,” he explained.
According to a police report, Elephant Man, whose given name is Oneil Bryan, arrived at the Sangster International Airport in Montego Bay, St James, in March 2020, along with members of his team, and was asked to declare the countries he visited.
Elephant Man had reportedly been on tour in Europe, but did not properly declare all the countries to which he had travelled, which was an immigration requirement. At the time, the Jamaican Government had put in place stringent safety measures at all ports of entry to identify whether people who travelled outside the country had been to countries where COVID-19 infections were high.