Crashed Bert ambulance sends you to prison
Andre Alvarez
A Police Street resident, who had a little too much to drink over the weekend, now has to find over four thousand dollars to pay the court and the Belize Emergency Response Team, (BERT) after he took an ambulance for a joyride then crashed it. The incident was reported by Riceño Pook Junior, who says that at around five-thirty on Sunday evening, he was at home when he heard a vehicle drive off. He went outside and saw his neighbor, twenty-three year old Andre Alvarez driving the BERT Ambulance that was parked in his yard. Alvarez returned the vehicle but crashed it into a fence, damaging the rear door and bumper. Pook requested court action and Alvarez appeared before Magistrate Adolph Lucas on Thursday to be arraigned for Taking a Conveyer without Authority and Damage to Property. He pleaded guilty to both charges and was fined a total of three thousand dollars. Magistrate Lucas also ordered Alvarez to pay compensation of one thousand, four hundred dollars to BERT for the damages to the ambulance. But while he escaped prison time on those charges, an old unpaid fine came back to haunt Alvarez in court and he will spend two and a half years in prison for the default.
Alcohol and drugs has become the diet for young people. It use to be that the older people in the country would look out for the young people. The older people would tell you what was right and wrong and tell your parents if they saw you doing something wrong. Today, the young people learn how to sit under the tree or under the house gamble, smoke cigarrettes or drugs, drink alcohol and talk stupidness.
How did we get to this place, We need one person with a heart for the country to take the leadership and change the course we are on. My prayer is that God will raise up such a person soon, or Belize is doomed.
I’m guessing Pook left the keys in the ignition and the doors unlocked. A lesson the learn.
2 1/2 years should be enough time for Alvarez to sober up and consider the stupidity of his joyride. Maybe he’ll grow up and get more serious about his life — lost time is something you can never recover.