Gun toting Good Samaritan foils burglary
For the second time in less than a week, a citizen armed with a licensed handgun has stepped forward to thwart a crime. The latest incident involving a gun toting Good Samaritan occurred on Friday in Belize City.
Lorraine Broaster, Victim of Break-in
“He violated my privacy, and at the early, early, early hours of seven-fifteen…what next.”
Jacqueline Woods, Reporting
Imagine coming home after work only to discover that your house has been broken into the burglar is still inside. Well early Friday night, that scene became all too real for fifty-two year old Lorraine Broaster.
Lorraine Broaster
“I heard a bang, so I said to myself that sounds like a backdoor. But not thinking or realising that it was my backdoor I continue up the step. I saw the light in the house on and I know my grandson left it off, so I still came up the stairs, I pulled the screen door, I put in the key into the door. When I put the key into the door I saw the guy move from in the living room towards the kitchen.”
What Broaster did next probably saved her from harm. Instead of shouting out to the man inside her house, she quickly closed back the door and went for help. The first person she reached was her neighbour, thirty-eight year old Customs Officer, Steve Young. Young, who was armed with a licensed thirty-eight revolver, went into the house but he was confronted by the intruder who by this time had gotten himself a weapon.
Lorraine Broaster
“The guy had a shiny object in his hands and come towards the officer, and the officer had to defend himself and he shot him.”
The burglar, identified as twenty-six year old Rupert Codd, received a single shot to his right side of his hip. Codd had already helped himself to a number of items including a bottle of cologne, jeans pants, boxer shorts, pair of socks and sneakers, wristwatches, deodorant, and a bottle of whisky.
Lorraine Broaster
“People, keep watch on your neighbours. Let us live for each other, because neighbourhood watch is good.”
Broaster says she believes if Young and other neighbours did not come to her rescue, she does not know what would have happened.
Lorraine Broaster
“And there is hope out there if you just live with each other. Be it any time of the day, you don’t have to stand up and hold any conversation, just bid them the time of the day, how you feeling. Because when you’re gone for hours, they are there for you.”
According to Police Press Officer G. Michael Reid, they are investigating to see if any charges will be brought against Young, but he believes the Good Samaritan has nothing to worry about.
G. Michael Reid, Police Press Officer
“Well from all indications, this is what occurred, that in fact the guy had a knife and when he attacked this individual how was assisting he had every right to defend himself.”
Codd broke into the house by tearing a back screen door and then kicking down the main wooden door.
Codd remains under police guard at the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital. Last Wednesday Leo Grant was shot and wounded by neighbour Kareem Espat after Grant had badly beaten a female resident of Cemetery Road.
