3 year old dies in accidental shotgun blast
Children and loaded guns are a deadly combination…and on Friday one family paid the ultimate price for letting the two meet. News 5’s Jacqueline Woods is just back from Xaibe Village with the tragic story.
Jacqueline Woods, Reporting
On Friday afternoon, three year old Eriberto Catch, Junior died from a gunshot blast to his chest. Today, Corozal police strongly suspect that an eleven year old boy may have been involved in the incident. Family members say they do not know what happened but that maybe the little boy climbed onto this stool and tried to reach for the gun when it went off. Authorities have been questioning the baby?s mother, grandfather and a primary school student?all who were present at the house when the shooting occurred. According to Benjamina Catch, who was not home at the time of the shooting, her husband, seventy-three year old Frojedos Catch, a watchman, told her that around midday on Friday afternoon, he came home and hung his loaded sixteen gauge shotgun on this wall partition in the kitchen. Catch says her husband then retired into the dining room to have lunch along with their eleven year old grandson. It was around this time that that her daughter in law, Guadaloupe Catch, who lives to the back of the yard, came over with her son to get water from the well. Catch says the mother first came out to the kitchen and told her son to stop playing rough with the family cat and then she went back to get the water. It is not clear what happened next but Catch says the mother was at the well when she heard the gunshot.
Benjamina Catch, Grandmother of Deceased
?She see the little boy putting his hands down and then she left the bucket by the well and ran over to the child. She noticed that he had a big cut here and she carried him crying and balling and saying mamita mamita something happened to my child.?
?The mother of the child told me that nobody was here in the kitchen. She didn?t see anyone here and when she was carrying the baby inside the house, she said that she saw my husband and my grandson coming out of the door.?
? I done ask the little boy when I hear that, I call him and I asked him if he held the gun and he told me no. I only ran by the baby and told him to leave the cat and then I gone in with my grandpa to eat. I was just staring to eat when I heard the gun and then that?s what they are telling me. I don?t know.?
But Corozal police say the pathologist?s report is telling them that there is no way the little boy could have shot himself. Furthermore, authorities say there are a number of inconsistencies with the eleven-year-old?s story that lead them to believe he may know what happened. Three-year-old Eriberto Catch was buried on Saturday. Jacqueline Woods for News 5.
Police are not certain when or if any charges will be brought against the elderly Catch for keeping a loaded gun inside his house. They will shortly be sending the case file over to the Director of Public Prosecutions for his decision.
