One Dead, One Critically Injured in Friday Evening City Shooting

Lyjon Franklyn

While that murder was in Valley of Peace, on Friday evening, as the extended holiday weekend was just getting underway, gun violence erupted once more on the south side of the City.  A gunman opened fire on two men who were hanging out in a yard. One died as he underwent surgery, while the other is still hospitalized. Police are following all leads and while the motive is not known, it is confirmed that both are no strangers to the law. News Five’s Isani Cayetano reports.

Isani Cayetano, Reporting

Thirty-three-year-old Lyjon Franklyn was slain on Friday night as he stood with a friend inside a yard on Iguana Street Extension.  The pair, including twenty-year-old Aaron Flowers, came under gunfire from a lone assailant.  A barrage of bullets would injure both men, Flowers to a somewhat lesser degree.

Raphael Martinez, Police Press Officer

“A 6:35 p.m. police visited the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital where they saw thirty-three-year-old Lyjon Franklyn and twenty-year-old Aaron Flowers suffering from multiple gunshot wounds.”

Franklyn and Flowers are known to Belize City police for their involvement in separate incidents in the past.  In May 2012, Lyjon Franklyn appeared before the magistrates’ court along with two others, after impersonating a police officer during an armed home invasion on Freetown Road.

His death on Friday evening would be the first in a series of seemingly unrelated incidents over the holiday weekend.

Raphael Martinez

“Initial investigations revealed that both Flowers and Franklyn were socializing in a yard on Iguana Street Extension when they were approached by a male person who fired several shots at them causing their injuries.  They were both transported, of course, to the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital where Franklyn, sadly, succumbed to his injuries while undergoing treatment and Aaron Flowers is still admitted in a critical condition at the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital.”

Raphael Martinez

On his end, Flowers also appeared in the lower court in September of last year, where, as a claimant, he refused to testify against an officer whom he had accused of extortion while in custody at the Queen Street Police Station.

Reporter

“Is there any motive at this point that has been ascertained for the murder of Lyjon Franklyn?”

Aaron Flowers

Raphael Martinez

“Well police are following several leads and as I’ve mentioned earlier we believe that quite a few of the young people in Belize City, there seems to be this distrust, mistrust and misunderstanding between groups of young people who’ve decided to go about instead of settling their differences in an amicable, peaceful manner, they decide to take matters into their own hands.”

It remains unclear tonight whether Flowers was indeed the intended target and if he is familiar with his attacker.  Meanwhile a police investigation continues. Reporting for News Five, I am Isani Cayetano.