BELIZE CITY, Wed. Aug. 28, 2019– Allison Cuthkelvin, 34, a laborer of Tibruce Street, has been given a 3-year jail sentence for burglary and handling stolen goods. Police found him in the ceiling of a house with a microwave oven valued at about $250, and they arrested him and charged him for the offenses.
Cuthkelvin was taken yesterday to the Belize City Magistrate’s Court, where he pleaded guilty. Chief Magistrate Sharon Fraser accepted the guilty plea.
According to court reports, Cuthkelvin, who was unrepresented at his trial, told the Chief Magistrate that he is a good man who made a mistake and he believed he deserved a second chance.
Cuthkelvin asked the judge to give him a reasonable time in jail so that he could be back in the life of his daughter, who is only six years old.
The Chief Magistrate explained to Cuthkelvin that while he saved the court time when he pleaded guilty, she had to take into consideration his previous conviction for burglary.
Cuthkelvin had been previously sentenced to a two-year prison term for another burglary at the same home, from where he had stolen a number of items, including a stereo. He committed the latest burglary while out on bail, waiting for his first burglary charge to be called up.
Chief Magistrate Fraser imposed a custodial sentence of 3 years upon Cuthkelvin and ordered that it run concurrently with the one more year he has left for the first burglary conviction.
Court reports are that on the night of January 31, 2018, Cutkelvin went into the house of his ex-girlfriend, Denise Martin, 29, a teacher of Lacroix Boulevard, by making a hole in the ceiling.
Martin was out at the time and when she returned home, she found the microwave missing, and called police.
Police didn’t find any evidence of forced entry into the house. They then searched the house and found Cutkelvin hiding in the ceiling with the oven.
In court yesterday, Cutkelvin said that he hid in the ceiling because his ex-girlfriend had taken out a restraining order against him. He admitted to police in an interview in 2018 that he entered the home of his ex-girlfriend as a trespasser, without her permission.
On his arraignment in February 2018, he had pleaded not guilty to burglary, but changed his plea to guilty in court yesterday.