Landlord punches female tenant

Jesus Ayuso

A Belize City man is spending his first of many nights in a prison cell after he was today sentenced to a year and a half behind bars for a brutal attack on his female roommate. Jesus Ayuso appeared before Chief Magistrate Ann Marie Smith and pleaded guilty to a charge of Wounding. The victim is Honduran national, Erica Jones, who sells pizza to earn a living. Jones says that business has been slow and when she couldn’t pay the rent, Ayuso wanted her out. But with nowhere else to go, she refused to leave immediately, which ignited an argument at their apartment last Thursday. She claims that she offered to give Ayuso all her profits for the following week to cover her half of the rent, but instead the confrontation took a violent turn. Ayuso is said to have to punched Jones in the face several times and slammed her head against a concrete wall. In court, Jones wore sunshades to hide some of the scars and abrasions on her face. In mitigation, Ayuso claimed that he was never disrespectful to Jones but that she owed him money and she refused to pay. The Chief Magistrate replied that there was no excuse for hitting a woman, before imposing the eighteen month jail term.