Two dead after drug bags rupture in stomach
We’ve seen it in the movies and heard accounts from places like Colombia…but the death of a drug mule by the rupturing of plastic bags in his stomach is a new phenomenon for Belize. Tonight we report not one, but two such tragedies. News 5?s Jacqueline Woods has more.
Natalie UH, Mother
?He called me and tell me where he was and when he come that day and he tell me what all he saw and he was so happy. He no tell me nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing what I can say. Nothing what I can say something happen to him.?
Jacqueline Woods, Reporting
On Saturday twenty-four-year-old Epitacio Genardo Navarro, an electrician from Belize City complained to his family that he was having severe abdominal pains. Navarro was rushed to the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital but died some fifteen minutes after he arrived. Natalie UH says last Friday her son returned to the country following a trip to Panama. While abroad he asked the family to send money because he was not feeling well and he wanted to come home. UH says when she finally saw her son on Saturday he appeared to be well, but later that day he grew seriously ill.
Natalie UH
?He come in and hug me and he said Ma I done come. I said alright son. He asked me if I missed him and I said yes I missed you. He said well I done come. He then asked for some food and I gave him food to eat home. He told me nothing. I don?t know nothing. Then late in the night he started to tell me that he had a gripping in the stomach.?
Jacqueline Woods
?It got worse??
Natalie UH
?Yes, then it got worse and he started to collapse and he started to vomit. But he just passed the food that he ate in the evening.?
UH says she knew her son had stomach problems in the past but this time the pain was very sudden and she became very concerned about what could have caused her son?s death. On that same day the Usher family from Hattieville Village were just as confused. Forty-six-year-old William Usher had also died that day under similar circumstances. Equally disturbing is the report that both Usher and Navarro were acquaintances and had travelled together to Panama. It did not take long before authorities were informed about the men?s deaths and the police started to investigate. Reports are that Usher and Navarro had allegedly swallowed a large quantity of drugs in an effort to smuggle them into the country. But some of the packages burst and poisoned their systems causing a massive drug overdose.
Ediberto Lopez, Brother of the Deceased
?So that is what has us suspicious. We want to know what happened to our little brother. So all of us want to know what happened. Nobody revealed anything to us. So yes, we know that he used to drink and smoke and so but we do not know about it.?
John Baptist, Brother-In-Law of the Deceased
?From the police they say there was a person who came from Panama and died the same way and he had drugs in his stomach and that is what caused the death. But my brother-in-law dah nuh somebody weh deal with drugs. He nuh smoke and he nuh use no kind of drugs. If he is sick he comes to the hospital to get some medication and he take it. That is the only drugs he uses.?
This afternoon the family and the police waited outside of the City?s morgue to get the official post-mortem results. While it?s not clear how many packages of drugs were found inside Usher?s body, sources tell News 5 that more than twenty-three small packages of what appears to be cocaine were found inside Navarro?s body along with an additional three smaller bags that had burst. Police would not comment on the findings nor their investigation, saying only that they are looking for one person that they believe was along with the men in Panama. Jacqueline Woods for News 5.
The Navarro family told News 5 that in late February Epitacio told them that he would be leaving Belize with two friends to go to the United States to help them bring back a vehicle, but that two weeks into the trip he called home to say he was in Panama. Meanwhile police say, pending further examinations, they cannot yet say whether it was cocaine or heroin that was found in Navarro’s body.
