Bullet Tree woman killed by Guat. gang
A crime spree in the Cayo District by a group of Guatemalan gunmen has left one woman dead and three families terrorized. Police report that the murder took place around 4:00 Thursday afternoon in the village of Bullet Tree Falls. Two masked men entered the house of Isabel and Carmita Garcia with the apparent intent of robbery. They tied up husband Isabel, age seventy-one, and also his fourteen year old niece, and left them lying on the ground behind the house. Carmita was being held by the bandits, when her son, thirty year old Carlos Garcia, who had apparently been alerted by the commotion, emerged from his house across the street, armed with his father’s shotgun. He told police that at this point, one of the robbers opened fire on him and he replied with a blast of his own. Carmita then got in the act, grabbing a nearby machete and landing a chop on one of her captors. Unfortunately, the other intruder responded by shooting her point-blank in the chest. According to Carlos, the pair of assailants, joined by a third man, then fled into the bush. Fifty-five year old Carmita was dead on arrival at San Ignacio Hospital.
According to police, the murder at Bullet Tree was not the only mayhem committed by the bandits. In the hour preceding the attack on the Garcias, two armed robberies were committed in the nearby village of Santa Rosa, each by gang of five Hispanic men. In the first, around 3 o’clock, they invaded a woman’s home and ordered her to lie on the floor while they stole some clothes and money. A half hour later, they did the same to another woman, ransacking her home, before stealing more clothing, four hundred dollars in cash and a sixteen gauge shotgun.
While the gang escaped following the killing of Carmita Garcia, police in Guatemala report that a gang fitting the same description apparently returned to that country and in the course of a hold-up in the village of Santa Teresita, one of the victims shot back, killing a member of the gang. Belize police are said to be joining with their Guatemalan counterparts in an effort to link the series of crimes and hopefully put an end to a source of misery on both sides of the border.
