Woman’s charge reduced from Murder to Manslaughter

A young woman, who had been in prison since 2005, was freed of a murder charge this afternoon by a jury of six women and six men in the Supreme Court. But the jury found her guilty of the reduced charge of Manslaughter, on a count of eleven to one. The woman, Yanira Escobar, will be sentenced on August eighteenth. Escobar, a Guatemalan citizen, was a minor at seventeen years old when she was accused of stabbing Yesenia Salgero, but had claimed she was twenty years old. To make matters worse, her defense attorney Linsford Wills told the court in the trial that Escobar did not speak any English and was illiterate when she signed a declaration before the police.

The incident occurred outside King’s club in the Cayo district around eleven p.m. on July third 2005, where an argument erupted with a friend of both Escobar and Salguero who purportedly had thrown bottles at the accused. The scuffle further escalated, Salguero was injured, and later died in the hospital. Police picked up Escobar at her apartment and kept her in custody until the trial.

The prosecution was led by D.P.P. Sheryl-Lynn Branker-Tait.