Sotz Family Furious As Charge against Policemen Is Downgraded

On Friday, charges against two police constables were downgraded from murder to manslaughter. PCs Hallet King and Leonard Nunez were accused of killing eighteen year old Hilberto Sotz, while he was detained at the Caye Caulker Police Station.  Sotz was badly beaten and taken to the polyclinic, but died within hours of his detention. Both King and Nunez were on duty and had removed Sotz from his cell on June eighth, 2015 to question him, but Sotz did not survive that interrogation. Despite an autopsy confirming that the high school student died from blunt trauma to the head and abdomen, they are only now facing manslaughter charges; a fact that has his family up in arms.

Santorino Sotz

Santorino Sotz, Father of Hilberto Sotz

“I am fighting the case; I don’t know what the D.P.P. is doing. I went this morning to the Ombudsman. The lady told me that the D.P.P. is avoiding our rights because she saying that it is lack of evidence that’s why the court give them bail; it’s not true. It’s because they are backing the police. That’s why I come here and I make an appointment this morning and tomorrow at eleven o’clock I will talk to her and show her the evidence. What kind of evidence more she want? I go the doctor autopsy. I have the police record; I will show you right now. I want she to give me the answer tomorrow at eleven o’clock why he drop that to manslaughter. That’s not manslaughter; that’s death. I want back and all the Caye Caulker people want those two officers back to jail till the case done. They arrest my son in my hand. If they arrested my son without my present, then I could not talk. But just like they took my son in my hand, they should put back my son ina my hand. And whosoever take my son, they are responsible for that.”