On Tuesday, June 15, 32-Year-Old Guatemalan national Myrna Pineda appeared before Magistrate Kathleen Lewis in the Belize City Magistrate Court to answer to a charge of grievous harm. The charge stemmed from an incident which occurred on Thursday, December 17, 2009 in which Pineda stabbed 26-year-old Claudia Gutierrez multiple times inside Plum Tree Restaurant. Pineda is a tacos vendor stationed in front of Public’s Supermarket on East Canal Street. Gutierrez was treated and released from the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital. It was her first week on the job as a waitress at the Plum Tree Restaurant.
In her first court appearance, December 2009, Pineda claimed that she stabbed Gutierrez in self-defense. She also said that it was Gutierrez who
interfered with her first. However, on Tuesday, she claimed that she was innocent of the charge and that it was not her who inflicted the injuries to Gutierrez. She said that it was during a struggle for the knife that Gutierrez got injured. According to Pineda, she was trying to take away the knife from Gutierrez. But Gutierrez was stabbed 8 times to the hands, nose, back of the neck and back. Shortly before noon on Tuesday, Magistrate Lewis found Pineda guilty of grievous harm. She was sentenced to 1 year in prison.
While there are multiple sides to this story, sources reveal that the incident was sparked by a dispute over Pineda’s common-law-husband. Reports are that previous to the stabbing, Gutierrez claimed that Pineda’s common-law-husband is her baby’s father.
