Eruption Club Owners are Arraigned; Now Out on Bail

On Wednesday, we reported that Eruption Nightclub owners were formally arrested and charged late that evening for “admitting a person under the age of eighteen” to enter their nightclub. Well today, forty-four-year-old Mira Estella Portillo and her common-law husband, fifty-one-year-old Hector Choj were arraigned for the charge and are now out on bail. The charge stems from a claim made by a seventeen-year-old female minor who says she was drinking while socialising at the nightclub. She ended up unconscious and alleges that she was later raped, before waking up inside a car on the Old Northern Highway. The minor’s report led to a police investigation of the club and the police allege that between the hours of 12:32 a.m. and 2:46 a.m. Choj and Portillo, being the licence holder of Eruption Club, admitted into the establishment, a person under eighteen years of age, to wit, seventeen years old. The couple pleaded not guilty to the charge and were offered bail of one thousand dollars each, plus a surety of the same amount, which they met by noon today. They were represented by attorneys Richard Dickie Bradley and Norman Rodriguez. Choj and Portillo are due back in court on December third.  A third person was charged in connection with this case of rape. Three days earlier, on Monday, twenty-five-year-old Michael Flowers was arraigned in the Belize City Magistrate’s Court for a single charge of rape. In a caution statement, the Ladyville resident said that he had sex with the minor. No plea was taken from Flowers due to the nature of the offense and he was remanded to prison until December twenty-ninth, 2022.