Three acquitted of St. Paul?s kidnapping

It was a dramatic tale in July 2003 … a husband and wife ambushed by masked and armed gunmen at their St. Paul’s Bank village home. Percival Flowers and Cecilia Stephenson barely escaped with their lives but on Monday night in the Belize City Supreme Court, the men they accused: Eugene Carter, Aaron Miller and Marlon Sutherland were acquitted of all the charges against them following less than two hours of jury deliberations. Carter, Miller and Sutherland had been arrested and charged with kidnapping, robbery and use of deadly means of harm after being identified by Cecilia Stephenson as the men who showed up at her house pretending to be the police and then abducted her and her husband. Stephenson told authorities that they were taken to an area in Ladyville where they were roughed up, threatened with death and her husband was shot in leg. The violence apparently ended when Stephenson offered the men money the couple had stashed in their home. Two men left with her to collect the cash while the others guarded Flowers. But once at the house, Stephenson outwitted the perpetrators, managing to escape and call the cops. The van used to transport Flowers was then intercepted by police on the Northern Highway and its occupants arrested. During the trial, the couple allowed that the motive behind the attack may have been the belief that Flowers had found two kilos of cocaine while fishing near Alligator Caye, alleging that the men wanted the money from the sale of the drugs. As part of their defence, the accused denied the allegations against them through unsworn statements from the dock. The defendants were represented during trial by Hubert Elrington while Cheryl Lynn Branker Taitt presented the government’s case.