Escaped convict caught in Xaibe
He made a bold run for freedom by loosening the bars over his cell door, but twenty three year old Luis Urbina Junior could not evade the long arm of the law for long. Around two-thirty this afternoon Urbina was captured in a cane field near Xaibe Village, but he didn’t go quietly. According to officer in charge of Corozal police, Superintendent Michael Gutierrez, a tip from an area resident led a five-man mobile patrol to the convicted rapist and kidnapper on a feeder road connecting the villages of Xaibe and Carolina. When the cops tried to take him into custody, Gutierrez says Urbina approached the officers with a machete. A bullet to one of his legs ended that threat, however, but determined not to go back to jail Urbina, though injured, still tried to run away. A second bullet to the other leg, however, quickly put all ideas of escape to rest, and he was transported to the Corozal hospital for treatment. Urbina was promptly slapped with a new charge of escape and the court wasted no time in imposing a seven year sentence. Previously, while Urbina was on the run, Supreme Court Justice Adolph Lucas was handing down sentences on Urbina and two other men in connection with the abduction of a Corozal couple and the rape of a woman. Mark Vega was found guilty of two counts each of kidnapping and rape. He was sentenced to ten years in jail for each kidnapping conviction and thirteen years each for the rapes. Omar Vellos was found guilty of two counts of kidnapping, for which he will spend ten years in prison and one count of rape which carries a thirteen year jail sentence. Urbina was found guilty of two counts of kidnapping and a count each of rape and unnatural crime. For the kidnappings, he was sentenced to ten years each, thirteen years for rape and eight years for the unnatural crime. The sentences are to run concurrently, meaning the time served by each felon will only be thirteen years. In Urbina’s case, however, his seven year escape sentence will commence at the end of the previous one, resulting in a total of twenty years in her majesty’s hotel. Vellos, Urbina, and Vega are yet to be tried for the murder of Susana Petkau and the attempted murder of her husband Enrique. Corozal police would like to thank residents of the Corozal District for their valuable assistance in capturing the escaped convict.
