If someone told you that 19-year-old Julissa Avila was a convicted armed robber, odds are you probably just wouldn’t believe them.
There’s nothing about the teenager’s big brown eyes and baby face to make one think she’s done eight months at Fairbanks women’s prison for last year’s hold up at the Domino’s Pizza shop in Savannah.
But it’s true, she did.
“I do regret it,” Ms Avila said. “Everybody asks me [why I did this robbery]. I don’t know. I really don’t.”
According to court records, Julissa and three of her friends pleaded guilty to the 3 June, 2010, holdup at the pizza shop. The three young women involved received jail sentences. A teenage male who was involved got probation.
Ms Avila said people in Cayman have a lot of misconceptions about the incident.
“Everybody thinks we sat down and planned this for days and ‘we’re going do like this’, no, no, no,” she said. “As of that morning [I was] just laying down on the couch watching TV.”
To the group of friends, the armed robbery at the pizza shop started out as a joke, Ms Avila said.
“It was like a joke to me, ‘oh, it would be fun if we could rob a bank for millions’,” she said. “But when I was actually outside the Domino’s masked with the machete I was like ‘oh my God.’ I couldn’t even go in and the next girl she was like ‘we can’t stay out here, we got masks and machete. We gotta go inside’.
“I don’t know how people can do that because [before the robbery] I couldn’t feel my legs, I couldn’t feel my hands. I just remember running in there, running out, quarters dropping from me – that’s all I remember.”
All four teens involved in the case were 17 when they planned and executed the robbery that netted a grand total of $366 and two litres of soda, according to court records. The young man waited outside in the getaway car while Ms Avila and two of her friends entered the store. Prosecutors said a machete was held to the throat of two pizza shop employees and they were forced to hand over the money.
The four were arrested about two weeks after the robbery.
None of the four had previous convictions and all wrote letters to the court expressing remorse about what they had done.
Didn’t need money
The bizarre thing about the robbery, Ms Avila said, is that she didn’t really need to get money in this way.
“I could get money or whatever and the guy had just got fired from where he was working,” she said. Another girl she was living with at the time was having financial problems, she said. “We were more trying to help out a friend in a sense.”
But that decision has cost Ms Avila dearly in her future prospects, and she knows it.
“I was a good girl, I got good marks in school and I had a scholarship to college,” she said, adding she’s lost that opportunity now. She’s still looking for a job at the moment and has most recently participated in the government’s internship programme at the Customs Department.
She admits that she was struggling to find work at the time of the robbery.
“It’s not like we weren’t looking for a job…we had even applied at Hurley’s a week previous, but we just wasn’t having no luck.”
She thinks part of the reason she became involved in the 3 June, 2010 Domino’s heist was boredom.
“As stupid as that may sound, it was something like that,” she said.
Ms Avila swears she’ll never do anything of the sort again. “I know it’s a sin”.
“I learned a lot in prison. I missed my family. If something happened to my family when I was there, I couldn’t be with them.”
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everybody regrets doing something wrong after they get caught.
I wonder if the person working to put food on his family’s table at Domino’s thought it was funny to have a machete held to his throat?
No sympathy here.. i think they should have got more punishment.
all I have to say is if you go on her facebook page you see things like this
I need a [expletive] so we can get drunk and smoke **** all day..ka busters aint lovin me rite!
sweetheart….I highly doubt you regret this…..our youth needs help !!!
Not the best advertisement for WESTSTAR. She is wearing their T-Shirt and clearly says that she was watching TV and did it out of boredom that day. OUCH!!!
Not a an ex-pat then! Seems the current spate of criminal behaviour is indigenous! I’m just saying…!
She doesn’t Regret doing it — she regrets getting caught. And how infuriating that the Compass would describe her as: teenager’s big brown eyes and baby face
I guarantee the people she terrorized in Dominoes Pizza would say she had big brown eyes and a baby face.
Is 8 months in prison giving a strong message to other criminals, particularly when the island is having robberies almost every day? Definitely not.
Please, can someone with a wiser head than mine answer these questions for me; it will help me make sense of this story and why its been printed/published.
What is the purpose of publishing/reliving this incident that happened more than a year ago and has been settled by the courts ?
Is there an rehabilitative motive to the story; as of now, I can’t read or see any.
Is there any deterant motive to the story?; can’t see any there either.
Will this story discourage or encourage more young people of this background and nature to arm themselves and committ more robberies just for the ‘thrill’ of it ?
Has this young woman expressed any sentiments that could be considered good advice to her peers to discourage them from following in her footsteps ?
Last, but definitely not least, what happens when the employees of these businesses begin to get wise, stop acting like scared victims and take these stupid morons weapons off them and turn them on them, injuring and possibly even killing them in the process of their stupid robberies ?
It must be only in the Cayman Islands that this also does not happen on as regular a basis as the robberies; maybe this is why these robberies are so prevalent and regualar in Grand Cayman.
Puzzled mind needs some answers here, please.
Gods and Clods…. people
We all need garbage men to take away our trash, dishwasher when we go out to eat dinner at restaurants, or cleaning ladies to clean our houses.
Don’t chastise her for doing what she did. We should all rejoice that we have another cleaning lady, counter clerk or fry cook, for society.
Criminal records, don’t sit well with higher paying jobs.
She may have had a short sentence. But no one should complain about that. Because every day, after saying a few hundred times a day, would you like fries with that. That will be her sentence for life.
Big Berd – I think you do a disservice to dishwashers, garbage men etc. They are hard working individuals in many cases, with family responsibilities that they take care of.
To draw a parallel with this fool is not fair. Some of the fast food workers are doing it because they were not afforded some of the opportunities that others get…this young ‘lady’ has no doubt had access to a free education, and decided not to make the best use of it. I wouldn’t want to employ this person in any of the positions you mention, particularly as a house cleaner.
Criminal records may not sit well with higher paying jobs, but that isn’t to say there are well paid crooks out there – just that they’re smart enough to pull off one of the dumbest crimes on the island.
She will reap what she sows though…
At a second glance I noticed there was disagreement to every comment posted.
You must obviously all be supporters of crime and machete/gun wielding lunatics.
The day you or a family member gets robbed, shot or cut you’ll change your vote to AGREE!
Think about what you disagreed to and MAYBE we’ll end up in living a safer island.
Julissa Avila’s response to the question, why I did this robbery, was, I don’t know. I really don’t. Sounds like a joke if it wasn’t such a serious offense. Ms Avila also states that she does regret it. Maybe she meant that she regrets getting caught.
For Ms Avila to further state that to the group of friends involved in the crime that the armed robbery started out as joke, defies reason and common sense. No form of crime is a joke in any way, especially when she was masked with the machete held to the throat of two pizza shop employees.
To read all the hog wash this 17 year old said at her interview is sickening to say the very least. It begs the question, what if the robbery did not produced the intended results (366 and 2 litres of sodas) Ms Avila and her hoodlum friends expected.
Ms Avila claims to be a good girl (What???). What is good is she now has a prison record. She further states that the reason she was involved in the armed robbery was ‘boredom.’ How about reading a book on the seriousness of armed robbery or voluntering at places that need volunteers. And there are serveral. Perhaps she should offer to ‘pull bush’ in somebody’s yard for pizza and soda.
Ms Avila now has lots of time to review her criminal actions.
So it go sometimes, we may have done something stupid but it looks like no one can ever make a mistake any more
aren’t we all humans?
maybe if someone was to help her find a job or fund her for school she wouldn’t have the time to rob places
grow up people!
Give her a break…. she is a good kid who screwed up.
How many of us out there are perfect ?
Everything about this story and person has ‘stupidity’ and ‘insincerety’ written all over it.
If this girl had come out of prison with a tale to tell of a horrible,’never want to go there again’ experience to share with her peers, maybe there would be some value in reporting her views and experience.
There is no remorse on her part, except for the opportunities that her stupidity has cost her…a scholarship sitting on the table…and now she expects someone will just roll over because she says she’s sorry?
Many of us have been broke and skint (out of money) many times but we didn’t go and mask up and hold machetes to hard-working people’s throats and rob them.
When this becomes the trivial offense that this report makes it seem, the cause for Cayman, is truly lost.
I have one bit of advice for this young lady and her friends…
Count yourself lucky that you’ve chosen the ‘right’ people to rob and think really strongly about never doing it again for one reason…
You might not be so lucky to escape unscathed the next time, to tell your story, particularly if you choose to attempt to rob certain people.
Polomol, are you one of the other three or something? Being a person who is indeed imperfect, I have made a few mistakes. However, not one of these mistakes involved threatening somebody with a machete.
As for misconceptions of the people of Cayman, Everybody thinks we sat down and planned this for days…, hmmmm, I don’t think people do think this. I could jot down a better plan to rob a pizza place in around 20 seconds, and it probably wouldn’t involve 2 litres of soda.