The man accused of robbing a St George’s bank was little more than a small-time cannabis dealer, his defence counsel has claimed.

Gregory Tucker is accused of entering the Butterfield Bank branch on June 9 last year, threatening staff with an imitation Beretta pistol and making off with cash.

A piece of the weapon left at the scene by mistake showed a strong DNA match with Mr Tucker after his arrest almost one month later.

On Monday, the defendant’s ex-girlfriend Faith Best recalled to Supreme Court finding a toy gun under her sofa before the incident, while Mr Tucker was living at her Smith’s home.

She added that she had ordered him to dispose of the item for the sake of her young child. Ms Best also recounted that, after falling out with her partner over his “petty lies” and after the robbery, he had left her a voicemail message asking her to remove a Clorox box from under the couch, place it in his green duffel bag, then leave the bag outside her side door for him to collect.

“I found it weird that he would specifically ask for that,” Ms Best said. She added that this suspicion led her to open the box and discover rolled up stacks of $10, $5 and $2 Bermudian dollar bills — which, last week, the court heard matched the description of the money taken during the robbery.

During his cross-examination of the witness yesterday, defence lawyer Charles Richardson accused Ms Best of “being dishonest” in her testimony, suggesting that she had misled police officers by telling them that Mr Tucker had conceded his guilt to her in a telephone conversation.

He also quizzed Ms Best about Mr Tucker’s sideline hustle selling small quantities of marijuana: suggesting that the crumpled notes she discovered were in fact the result of his weed-dealing, rather than from the robbery.

Ms Best conceded that this was also her initial belief.

“Truthfully, I did think that,” she said.

However, the witness took umbrage at Mr Richardson’s suggestion that she withheld information from authorities.

He argued that when Ms Best called the then-prosecutor following Mr Tucker’s July 6 arrest, and shared potentially incriminating details about him, she deliberately failed to mention that the rolls of money could have come from selling cannabis.

Earlier in the cross-examination she had admitted to sometimes smoking the weed that Mr Tucker bought, while the previous day she claimed to have voluntarily shared the information, such as the toy gun and the banknotes, as she was scared of being implicated in the robbery.

“I wasn’t trying to get anyone in any more trouble than they were already in,” she told Mr Richardson.

“It’s not fair for you to character-assassinate me or break me down. I’m telling you my truth.”

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