“I know it was mistake what I did. I know that it is also a sin before the eyes of the lord. I now ask for forgiveness from god and those people.” That’s what twenty year old Guatemalan Yanira Escobar said shortly before she was told that she would be spending the next fifteen years behind bars. She was sentenced for the stabbing death of twenty two year old Judith Salguero. The young mother of four was killed on July third, 2007 following an argument between two groups of young women who had gone out that night club hopping in San Ignacio. Escobar stabbed Salguero in the chest with a knife.
Today in the Supreme Court Escobar told Justice Herbert Lord that stabbing Salguero was a mistake and that all she wished for that night was to help her sister and niece. At the end of the trial in August a jury of twelve deliberated for four hours and decided that Escobar was not guilty of murder but guilty of manslaughter and today she was sentenced for the crime. Instead of being sent to prison for life she received the minimum jail term.
The DPP brought to the court’s attention another case in which Roaring Creek resident Clifford Hyde was convicted of manslaughter in the death of a Belmopan resident and got twelve years. But on appeal the judge decided that the twelve years was too lenient and he added on to the sentence three more years.
And it was that precedent that guided Justice Herbert Lord in his final decision. He told the court that since that comment was made by the court of appeal, the minimum sentence he could impose on the prisoner was fifteen years. Yanira Escobar was only seventeen years old when she stabbed Judith Salguero.
