O.W. man charged in Benque murder
The initial police report said, “foul play is suspected.” Today that verdict was confirmed by a post-mortem, and an eighteen-year-old resident of the Orange Walk District has been charged with the murder of his girlfriend, Heidi Itza, in Benque Viejo del Carmen. News 5’s Patrick Jones travelled west to find out how what appeared to be young love could so quickly turn fatal.
Patrick Jones, Reporting
As family and friends gathered to pay their last respects, the parents of nineteen year old Heidi Itza are still trying to figure out why she was murdered, allegedly by the man who just hours before had been introduced to them as her boyfriend. Sixty-two year old Roberto Itza says he was awaken around eight-thirty on Monday night by his youngest daughter.
Roberto Itza, Heidi’s Father
“My daughter Heidi told me, father she said, I present my boyfriend that is going around me and I come and present him. So at that time I surprise because at no time I heard that she had a boyfriend because I never went to Orange Walk, I never went to San Pablo for many years. So the fellow was standing up there, he had his head bowed down, he never look on me. So he said to me, he said I come and ask permission to visit your daughter Heidi because I am interested to be her boyfriend.”
That boyfriend was eighteen year old Eliezer Obed Dominguez, a resident of San Pablo Village in Orange Walk who, according to relatives of the victim, travelled across the country to be with Heidi, apparently to bring her an early birthday present. Despite some initial hesitation, Itza said he and his wife Damiana gave the couple their blessing, but remembers thinking that something wasn’t quite right.
Roberto Itza
“The first time I saw him here at my house, the first time. I didn’t know him before. So I have never spoken with him before, but it looked to me suspicious because I surprise. I even stay like dumb, when I saw this person that he was not looking at my face. When he came to me and ask me permission to visit my house, he had his head down, he had on a cap and then he spoke that he want permission formally because he loved my daughter.”
About fifteen minutes after the introductions, Itza says Heidi left, in the company of her boyfriend, and that was the last time, he saw her alive.
Roberto Itza
“So she came out, my daughter tell her take care, my wife said take care of yourself and she went into the car, a white Toyota 4124 I think the plates have. So they went into the car and they drove away.”
But instead of going back to her sister’s home in Benque Viejo where she was staying, Heidi was apparently taken to Hotel Maya on George Street. Officer in charge of the Benque police station, Inspector Selvin Tillett, says they were called to room ten on Tuesday morning where they found Heidi dead on the bed.
Insp. Selvin Tillett, O.I.C. Benque Police
“At the time when we arrived there was a male person on the veranda, the suspect.”
Patrick Jones
“What did he say?”
Insp. Selvin Tillett
“He claimed, his comments that it was a third person that had killed his girlfriend, but he didn’t see the person because he was knocked out. He was hit with a board.”
But police did not believe Dominguez’s story and Tillett says that upon further questioning, the true picture of what happened sometime between eleven-thirty on Monday night and seven o’clock on Tuesday morning slowly began to emerge. And it appears that Heidi fought her attacker to the end.
Insp. Selvin Tillett
“There seems to be scratches such as of having a fight with the female, but otherwise none.”
Patrick Jones
“He was arrested as a suspect, so the police must have think that he killed the girl?”
Insp. Selvin Tillett
“That’s right.”
Patrick Jones
“What lead you to believe that he killed the girl?”
Insp. Selvin Tillett
“Circumstances. He was the only one with the girl. He was the only one inside the room with the girl. We could not find no other links, no other entry into the room, no force of entry by anyone, so all fingers pointed to his direction.”
Patrick Jones
“Has he been cooperating, has he been saying anything?”
Insp. Selvin Tillett
“Firstly he was refusing, but gradually he accepted reality and accepted that yes did kill the girl.”
Patrick Jones
“Did he at any point tell the police that he killed his girlfriend?”
Insp. Selvin Tillett
“In the longer run, later on in the night, after several attempts interviewing him, he accepted after all.”
Patrick Jones
“He accepted. Did he in his words tell the police I killed my girlfriend?”
Insp. Selvin Tillett
“That’s yes, sir he accepted it.”
Patrick Jones
“Officer again, he accepted, sounds as if though the police put it to him that he killed his girlfriend. Did he tell you that he killed his girlfriend?”
Insp. Selvin Tillett
“I said he after interviewing he accepted it, no one forced him to say anything. He on his own accepted that yes, he did the act.”
Roberto Itza
“He planned this crime. And I think Belizean people or the public should help the police one another to not happen again. And the next thing I want to say, the hotels do not have no security. According to investigations, what I get from other people, she was bawling, asking for help and nobody help her at the hotel. At the hotel there were maybe about twelve or twenty people, I don’t know how much, only the hotel owner know about that, and he have no security. If he would have had security, things would have been different.”
Patrick Jones, for News 5.
Two other people, including the taxi driver who brought Dominguez to Benque, have been cleared of any involvement in the murder. Eliezer Dominguez is no stranger to the news media. In December he was charged with drunk driving and other offences for his role in a fatal accident on the Northern Highway.
