Cayo robber sentenced to 36 years

One suspected criminal may have headed across the border but another made the mistake of crossing in the opposite direction. Henry Lara, a resident of the village of Caoba in Guatemala’s Peten, has been convicted for two recent armed robberies and sentenced to a whopping thirty-six years in prison. Lara, found guilty in the Mother’s Day jacking of a van full of tourists near Chaa Creek and the April seventeenth mugging of two British visitors to Xunantunich, was captured as he prepared to execute yet another robbery. Lara was apprehended on Monday by Benque Viejo police when an officer on routine patrol near the Maya ruin spotted two masked men hiding in some bushes. His gun jammed as he attempted to exchange gunfire with the pair, but a call for reinforcements resulted in a sweep of the area, netting the thirty-six year old Guatemalan, along with his mask. The long sentence results from the numerous counts of the charges with each sentence running consecutively instead of concurrently.