O.W. driver pleads guilty in knockdowns

The driver of a car that veered onto an Orange Walk sidewalk on Sunday, injuring four children, has been arrested and charged. Forty-five year old Carlos Roberto Cruz, a logger from Trial Farm, today pled guilty to driving without due care and attention, failure to report an accident, four counts of negligent wounding, four counts of failure to stop and render aid and damage to property. Total fines levied for all the charges came to over seventeen hundred dollars and must be paid by January twenty-first or Cruz will face jail time. But that’s not his only worry. The charge of driving with alcohol above the prescribed limit has been adjourned until the tenth of January. Cruz, out on bail of fifteen hundred dollars plus one surety, also had his driver’s permit revoked until the outcome of that trial. On Sunday afternoon an allegedly intoxicated Cruz drove his Chevy Nova onto the sidewalk in Orange Walk Town, injuring Walter, Jairo and Kariza Valdez and Fabiola Rivera.