A Belize City man who pleaded not guilty to charges of aggravated assault and use of threatening words was sentenced to prison after he changed his plea to guilty, just as Chief Magistrate Ann Marie Smith was imposing bail conditions after she arraigned him on the charges Friday morning.
“I don’t want to waste the court’s time,” Floyd McNab, a construction worker and resident of Evergreen Street, Lake Independence, told the Chief Magistrate. “I am working and don’t have time to come up and down to court,” he said.
Having made that statement, McNab decided to change his not guilty plea to guilty, repeating twice more, “I can pay the court fine.”
McNab’s change of mind came after Smith was laying down conditions for a $500 bail the court was offering him. As part of his bail condition, McNab would have had to relocate to another house, something he said he had no problem doing, as he had already given an alternative address where he could reside until the case before the court was completed.
But just as Smith was asking the court’s prosecutor if he wanted McNab to report to the police station, McNab changed his mind and decided to plead guilty to the two charges.
The Chief Magistrate asked him, after entering his guilty plea and hearing the facts of the case, “so you took advantage of a man in a wheelchair?”
McNab replied, for a third time, “I can pay the court fine.”
Smith told him, “I am the one passing sentence on you.”
“So why you took advantage of a man in a wheelchair,” Smith asked him again.
McNab replied that the man, Jeffery Flowers, who had made the complaint to police, “has mental problems.”
“All the more reason you should not take advantage of him,” Smith told him.
The brief moment of silence in the courtroom was broken when Smith raised her head from writing on McNab’s court-book and announced, “for the aggravated assault I am sentencing you to three months in prison, and for the use of threatening words you are sentenced to one month in prison; both sentences are to run concurrently.”
McNab appeared dumbfounded, as if in a daze when the court orderly led him out of the courtroom, only snapping back to life when he attempted to hide his face from court reporters’ cameras on the walk to the court’s holding cell.
On May, 14, Jeffery Flowers, a resident of 4501 Evergreen Street, reported to police that Floyd McNab, on that same day, had threatened him, after pulling a machete on him at the rooming house where they reside.
Flowers reported to police that on the day of the incident, he had lost the key to his room and was banging on the lock in an effort to gain entry, when McNab came out of his room and told him, “no di mek no silly noise around my room.”
According to Flowers, McNab then swung a short machete at him, as he told him: “No play like you crazy, cause I would just go for something and bust yu face open.”