Two acquitted of kidnapping

A Belize City father and son walked out of court free men this afternoon, cleared of kidnapping charges following their trial in the Supreme Court. Thirty-four year old Oscar Bonilla and his fifty-eight year old father Manuel Chinchilla, were arrested following a report in April 2005 by twenty-two year old Alex Bautista. At the time, Bautista told police that he was abducted from an area on West Canal by four people, including Chinchilla and Bonilla, who took him to Burrell Boom and roughed him up, doused him with kerosene and then threatened to light a match. The apparent motive for the assault was that two relatives of the defendants, girls aged thirteen and fourteen, had identified Bautista as one of two men who had sex with them. Investigators would later surmise that Bonilla and Chinchilla had picked up Bautista intent on forcing a confession out of him. But the prosecution’s case collapsed when the defendants’ attorney, Richard Stuart, started punching holes in Bautista’s story. By the time Stuart was finished cross examining the witness, Bautista had recanted his earlier statement, testifying that he had been taken to a house in King’s Park, not Burrell Boom and admitted that he had voluntarily gotten into the vehicle. When Justice Troadio Gonzalez asked Bautista which version of the facts was true, the young man was unable to answer but insisted he was telling the truth. The contradictions didn’t wash with the jurors who returned from their deliberations at around three thirty today to acquit both Bonilla and Chinchilla of harm and kidnapping. The case for the crown was presented by prosecutor Kamar Henry.