Leon Savery Succumbs to Gunshot Injuries Five Weeks After Deadly Shooting

Leon Savery

A victim of a shooting spree back in September died on Monday night at the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital. Leon Savery was among a group of men who were targeted in the area of Saint Mary’s Primary School hours after Cyril McFoy was murdered in his yard on Euphrates Avenue. For five weeks, Savery remained hospitalized receiving treatment for the gunshot wound to his rear. But on Monday night at around eight o’clock, he passed away making him the fourth murder victim of the shootings of September seventeenth. Isani Cayetano reports.

Isani Cayetano, Reporting

Twenty-eight-year-old Leon Savery was one of four men injured during an armed assault while socializing on Angel Lane on the night of September seventeenth.  The shooting, it is widely speculated, was reprisal for the mid-afternoon murder of fifty-six-year-old Cyril McFoy.  McFoy, the father of well-known George Street figure Brandon Tillett, was gunned down several hours earlier while playing dominoes inside his yard on Euphrates Avenue.  That incident would later trigger a rash of shootings across Belize City, culminating in an attack on a group of friends who were hanging out in front of St. Mary’s Primary School.  While standing near a food stall, twenty-eight-year-old Nigel Ferguson, thirty-year-old Mark Alamilla, twenty-six-year-old John Avilez and family member Leon Savery were caught flat-footed by a single shooter who alighted a vehicle and took aim at them.

Before the men were able to flee to safety they were all wounded to varying degrees during the fusillade.  Ferguson was hit in the left cheek, Alamilla to the left upper leg, while Avilez was shot twice to the right side of the chest and once in the right arm.  Savery was caught in the buttocks.  Of the four, Avilez’s injuries were seemingly the most serious.  He succumbed while undergoing treatment at the K.H.M.H. a few hours later.  Savery, on the other hand, remained hospitalized and had been fighting for his life since.  Shortly before eight o’clock on Monday night, he lost his battle.

During a police press briefing, which included Prime Minister Dean Barrow, the day after the deadly shooting, Officer Commanding Eastern Division, Assistant Commissioner of Police Dezeree Phillips told the media that six persons had been detained, following the sudden spate of violence.  While those individuals, including Brandon Tillett, were subsequently arraigned, the charge brought against him was unrelated.  Tillett was indicted on attempted murder for an incident in which he was identified as the triggerman during the shooting of Kevin Alvarez earlier this year.   His associate, twenty-six-year-old Ryan Davis was also charged with attempted murder and use of deadly means of harm for his role in the near-fatal shooting of Joseph Rowland that same night.  The investigation into Savery’s death will now be classified as a homicide.  The gunman who assaulted the group however, remains unidentified. Reporting for News Five, I am Isani Cayetano.

Clifford Roches was also murdered in the September seventeenth gun violence.