Belmopan Teen Undergoes Surgery After Brutal Box Cutter Attack

A 17-year-old student underwent intense surgery on his back after he was attacked by a man who has been dubbed as a mentally ill individual.  Jeremy Bejerano was walking through the Central Walkway in Belmopan on Monday evening just before four o’clock when the incident unfolded.  Reports say that when the student passed 45-year-old, Cecil Parks, he asked him about his strong body odor which apparently triggered the man to launch an assault on the teenager.  The student reportedly defended himself by punching Parks in the face and turned to walk away which is when Parks slashed him in the back with a box cutter.  The child sustained a cut to the left side of the back measuring twelve inches long.   As a result, Bejerano had to receive inner and outer stitches at the Western Regional Hospital.  Love News spoke with Belmopan’s Mayor, Pablo Cawich, on the concerns raised by residents regarding Parks and the safety of students.

Pablo Cawich, Mayor of Belmopan City: “To handle something like that where it comes to mentally challenged individuals that is something where we would need to work in collaboration with places like the police department as well as human services and the Ministry of Health. So what I believe will be our role next week is we will ensure that we reach out to these entities to try and find out how we can address these types of issues. I believe that one of the things that schools would be able to do is to try and ask students to be analytical when it comes to everyday behavior out in public because we should always be analyzing how we behave from walking on the street to how we interact with other individuals that we come across in the community. So in my case I do believe there is a lot to be enforced by schools when it comes to student behavior.”

Police have since charged Parks for the assault.  Reports to our newsroom say that this is not the first time that Parks had launched attacks against residents.