On trial: From left Justin Calderon, Arthur Dill and Kershun Dublin all deny charges of conspiracy to possess firearms, bullets and drugs. *Photos by Coggie Gibbons
On trial: From left Justin Calderon, Arthur Dill and Kershun Dublin all deny charges of conspiracy to possess firearms, bullets and drugs. *Photos by Coggie Gibbons
Smugglers hid guns and drugs in a metal toolbox and fraudulently used other people's names to import them, a court heard yesterday.

Three revolvers and a pistol, along with 170 rounds of ammunition and $25,000 worth of cannabis, were found wrapped in plastic and squeezed into hollow metal legs welded onto the three-level toolbox.

Kershun Kenneth Dublin, 25, of North Shore Road, Pembroke; Justin Calderon, 25, of Mission Lane,

Pembroke; and Arthur George Van Lowe Dill, 45, of Orchard Grove,

Pembroke deny charges of conspiracy to possess firearms, bullets and drugs.

The guns were a Glock 19

nine-millimetre semi-automatic

revolver, a Ruger .357 magnum Speed Six revolver, an Astra Spain .38

calibre revolver and a .32 calibre

revolver. Two of the handguns were loaded and the other two unloaded, when they were prised out of the box legs, the court was told.

An eight-woman, four-man Supreme Court jury heard that the drugs and guns were imported in April last year.

Opening the case for the prosecution, Crown Counsel Robert Welling told the jury that the orange toolbox was air freighted to Bermuda by DHL couriers from an address in Florida and put in the Customs warehouse where it was X-rayed.

That procedure turned up the contraband and the toolbox was seized. The airway bill on the toolbox was addressed to a Terry Stevens of Gilbert Hill, Smith's and the contact cellphone number was that of Antoinette Bolden.

Both are actual people living in Bermuda who knew nothing of the use of their personal information, Mr. Welling said.

The police sealed the box legs, marked the box for subsequent identification and put it back into circulation to see who would come to collect it from the courier.

"Each defendant in succession," the Crown lawyer continued, "became involved with the box eleven days later."

He said that Mr. Dill posed as Terry Stevens to sign the box out from DHL and Mr. Dublin arranged with an innocent friend to pick the box up in her car.

The box ended up on Crane Lane.

"It was handled by four other men not identified in the case," he said, "and was very quickly spirited away."

Palm prints

Narcotics officers arrested the defendants still in the area and ­located the box buried in rubbish under a mattress cover in a shed outside Mr. Calderon's house.

Palm prints belonging to Mr. Dublin and Mr. Calderon were found on the outside of the legs of the toolbox.

Police firearms officer, Pc Stuart Kirkpatrick, said two of the handguns were loaded and the other two unloaded, when they were found.

Holding each one up in turn, he displayed three revolvers and a pistol - although the indictment described the Glock pistol as a revolver.

He tested each one and found that it was capable of firing.

The officer also identified the bullets as found in groups of four, nine, 101, and 50 for a total of 164.

The indictment charges 170 bullets.

Under cross-examination by John Perry QC for Mr. Calderon, the witness agreed that the weapons and drugs were not put back into the toolbox once they were removed from it.

Detailing Mr. Dill's arrest Dc Walter Jackson recounted the man as claiming to know nothing of the box's contents and to have first become involved in collecting it only on the same day.

He said a man nicknamed Smalls and fitting Mr. Dublin's description offered him $20 for his trouble.

"He offered me a hustle and that was right up my alley," Mr. Dill later said in a tape-recorded interview played to the jury.

The trial continues before Puisne Judge Carlisle Greaves.