Man charged in Commercial Centre stabbing death

It was a story that blazed into the headlines: two men who called the streets of Belize City home viciously fighting to a deadly end. Tonight, the sole survivor of that brutal incident, forty-one year old Stanford Franklin is on remand at the Hattieville prison after being formally arraigned for the charge of manslaughter. Franklin was granted bail in the amount of five thousand dollars, but when no one came forward to pay up, this evening he was transferred to the correctional facility. Magistrate Margaret Gabb-McKenzie adjourned the case until January twenty-sixth. Franklin and another man, Victor Avilez, got into a fight on the night of November tenth in an area behind the Commercial Centre in Belize City. It is alleged that during the altercation, Avilez pulled out a knife and stabbed Franklin, but then Franklin got a hold of the weapon and stabbed Avilez, fatally wounding him. Franklin was critically injured in the incident and was rushed to the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital where he recovered from his injuries sufficiently enough to be discharged today.