He is a mechanic convicted of stripping, instead of fixing a woman's car but now Herbert Wiltshire says he's innocent. As we reported last month the mechanic was convicted in absentia based on a complaint from Ethel Arnold. She told police that in February of 2005 she left her four-door Mazda car at Wiltshire's mechanic shop on Cran Street for repairs. She says when she returned two weeks later, her car had been stripped, not fixed. She told the court that Wiltshire stripped the car of all four wheels, the battery, the radiator, the cooling fan, the speakers, the distributor cap, the handles for the doors, and the horn on the steering wheel, valued at a total of $7,815.
Wiltshire failed to show up for trial on July 16th last year and so the trial continued without him on December 22nd when he was sentenced to five years in prison. But today Wiltshire did show up in court with his Attorney Michael Peyrefitte and his brother John Wiltshire. Peyrefitte informed the court that Wiltshire was appealing the sentence. John appeared because he had signed bail for Herbert the first time around and when Herbert failed to appear in court his bail was revoked. John was ordered to pay $2,500 within the next month and the other half in monthly payments of $100 starting on February 28th. Herbert Wiltshire was offered another$ 5,000 bail but he needs to find a new surety this time around. Up to when last we checked, he had yet to find that new surety and find bail.
