Samuel August, Guilty of Robbery

Samuel August

You will remember Samuel August, the former Belize City Council employee who armed himself with a backhoe in the wee hours of October twenty-ninth, 2018 and rammed it into the Faber’s Road home of his three children and their grandmother, killing one of the children, five-year-old Samir August and the grandmother, fifty-three year-old Louise Young as they slept.  Today, August was found guilty in the Magistrate’s Court for robbery.  This is in connection with a second incident that occurred days later, when August managed to escape from police guard while receiving treatment at the K.H.M.H. for injuries he had sustained when he drove the backhoe into the house.  August escaped through a window and made his way to Gentle Avenue where he accosted Tanesha Ross as she was about to drive off in the vehicle to drop off her two teen-aged daughters to school.  The crazed August assaulted Ross and gained control of her 2015 Chevy Equinox, valued at thirty thousand dollars, then drove to the Philip Goldson Highway, where he slammed into a parked backhoe.  He then armed himself with a knife and a pair of scissors that he found in the vehicle and began to inflict cut wounds on himself before he was subdued and taken into custody a second time.  In court, a psychiatric evaluation determined that August was fit to stand trial for robbery.  He told the court that he was depressed at the time.  Magistrate Emmerson Banner found him guilty and will sentence him on Monday.  August remains on remand pending trial for two counts of murder in connection with the first incident.