San Pedro man fires shot at 2 dogs and ends up in court

Byron Ashford Evans

A San Pedro resident is tonight in police custody for discharging a firearm in public… on two pit bulls.  Thirty-three-year-old Byron Ashford Evans was today before the court to answer to a single charge of discharging a point thirty-eight revolver while on Tarpon Street in San Pedro Town.  Evans has been in police custody since June tenth, but his attorney believes his client’s constitutional rights were violated when the police took days to take him to court.  It was not until this morning, six days after his arrest that Evans was taken to the Belize City Magistrate’s Court.   Attorney Oscar Selgado told the court that Evans was forced to pull his licensed firearm and shoot at the two pit bull dogs who he claimed attacked Evans. Selgado, quoting the law, told News Five that Evans was acting in protection of his person and that he should have never been charged.

Oscar Selgado, Attorney for Byron Evans

Oscar Selgado

“Byron Evans is a citizen of San Pedro who has been charged on the twelfth of June this year with discharging his firearm in a public place that is forty feet away from a public road. He was initially detained by police on Tuesday, the tenth, he was charged on Thursday, the twelfth. He was charged in front of a justice of the peace he was not taken to a magistrate so he was not arraigned per say. He still hasn’t been arraigned yet because the police in san Pedro held him on Thursday and brought him in Belize City. Because the magistrate in San Pedro could not hear the matter for some reason and she left the jurisdiction. So they brought him here on Friday, but did not do the proper coordination with the courts in Belize City. So he was not taken in front of any magistrate at all on Friday. Today I have been instructed by my client that the facts under which he was arrested are such that he was in the lawful possession of a firearm and that he acted in a lawful manner. He acted in the protection of himself.  He was being attacked by two pit-bull dogs on a public street in a public space. Now the third act of Belize is saying that people who owns such dogs who has the propensity to be vicious should contain those dogs either on a leash or in a fenced yard or fenced property that was not done so the police did not in my view use the discretion afforded to them by the law to investigate the matter one and two to release Byron Evans from its custody because he then acted in a accordance with the law, he acted in the protection of his person, he acted lawfully at all relevant times.”

The case was adjourned for Tuesday.