After Losing Arm in Attack, Navas Fights to Rebuild

A domestic abuse survivor from San Ignacio is bravely stepping forward tonight, asking for help as she works to rebuild her life and care for her four children. Back in August 2024, Ilsida Navas was asleep when her partner suddenly turned violent, attacking her with a machete in a terrifying assault that left her with deep chop wounds to her arms and legs, stab wounds to her chest, and ultimately cost her the loss of her left arm. Navas survived the ordeal through sheer will, but the road to recovery has been long. Now, she’s hoping to take a major step forward: a doctor in El Salvador has agreed to provide her with a prosthetic arm, but it comes with a price tag of three‑thousand eight‑hundred U.S. dollars. Tonight, Navas is appealing to the public for support, determined to regain her independence and keep providing for her family despite everything she’s endured.

 

On the Phone: Ilsida Navas, Domestic Abuse Survivor

“I tell he I want to go to the bathroom and he told me know I won’t go to the bathroom. He told me no, if you want to piss please do it here in the room. And I told him are you ok, why are you acting so. In normal words, not angry, just like how I am talking now. And then he said, no here is this, you can drink this. He gave me a bottle of faboloso, disincline, we use to mop. I told him no, that is not water. I told him please put the machete down and stop acting like that. I mih get sleepy and I went down to sleep and like three in the morning he attacked me with the machete. Because when he was trying to push the machete inside my heart, first he did it at my left. He mih push the machete the point. That one I didn’t feel it because I was in trauma. The right one I feel it because he was pushing down to tear my bone I think. Sometimes I am feeling sad because I have my four kids. The father of my four kids went to states like six years ago and he is not responsible for my kids.”

 

Navas says she’s now living in constant fear, after learning that the man who brutally attacked her has been released from the Belize Central Prison and is back on the streets.