5 Guatemalans Charged for Cache of Firearms; 2 Plead Guilty

For the latest news across Belize, visit: http://edition.channel5belize.com/ Around ten a.m., five of the seven Guatemalans appeared before Magistrate Emmerson Banner for the cache of ammo found on them at a checkpoint in Hattieville and at a hotel in Belize City. They are: forty-one-year-olds Marco Palencia and Mario Moreira Lopez, forty-year-old Gilberto Jimenez, forty-six-year-old Bernardo Carillas de la Franco and fifty-four-year-old Sergio Morales Godoy. Morales and Carillas were slapped with a total of eight charges. Those are for a nine millimetre pistol with a prohibited magazine of the same calibre and forty-seven rounds of ammunition. The remaining charges are for a C.Z. pistol as well as a point forty calibre gun with an extended magazine that contained thirty-nine live rounds. Twenty-nine live rounds of point forty millimetre ammo, which are prohibited in Belize, were also found on the duo. Meanwhile, Lopez, Jimenez and Palencia were jointly charged after they were intercepted in Hattieville with a black berretta pistol with seven live rounds of ammunition. The trio was also in possession of a black point forty millimetre extended magazine, a camouflage point forty millimetre glock and thirty-six point matching live rounds. The men returned to court this afternoon where Carillas and Lopez pleaded guilty to the firearm offences. While their accomplices were released, Carillas and Lopez go back to court on November eighth when they will know their fate.