A FLORIDA teacher was sentenced to a year and a day in federal prison in the United States after she pleaded guilty last year for purchasing guns for a Trinidad-based criminal gang. Shannon Nicole Samlalsingh, 47, was sentenced by US District Judge Williams F Jung in a Tampa, Florida, court on a charge of conspiracy to make false statements to a firearms dealer, a release from the US Embassy in Port of Spain stated yesterday.

According to court documents, Samlalsingh, then a Hillsborough County high school teacher, bought seven firearms for a Trinidad-based transnational criminal organisation. She then falsely stated on Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives forms that the firearms were for her. However, it was discovered that she gave the firearms to members of the transnational criminal organisation.

Those individuals then smuggled the firearms into Trinidad.