After 3 Months Missing, Jamal Humes’ Remains Found Near Mile 8
Jamal Humes
This morning around nine o’clock, a team of officers set out to a remote area of Western Pines where they were led to a shallow grave along a dirt road near the site of the proposed Airport Link Road. There they found a makeshift burial place where a badly decomposed body lay entombed beneath the dirt. About an hour and a half later, scenes of crime personnel would arrive at the location to begin the process of a forensic examination. When a pathologist finally showed up this afternoon, the remains were unearthed and transported to Burrell Boom for an autopsy. According to friends and family, the corpse is that of Jamal Humes who has been reported missing since late December, 2017. The mechanic was killed and disposed of far from where he lived in Belize City. News Five’s Isani Cayetano has been on the scene of the gruesome discovery and has the following report.
Isani Cayetano, Reporting
After many weeks of tirelessly searching for the remains of twenty-eight-year-old Jamal Humes, his loved ones are tonight a step closer to finality. The mechanic was last seen alive by friends and family on the night of December twentieth, 2017. When he failed to show up on Christmas Day, his mother became deeply worried. It was unlike Jamal to go without informing her of his whereabouts.
Sharlene Nicholas
Sharlene Nicholas, Mother of Missing Person [File: December 27th, 2017]
“It is extremely strange because my son does not go anywhere or do anything without first informing me. If my son decided that he will go away for Christmas, I would have known because he would have let me know. If it was a text, my son’s phone is dead, and my son, if he was out during the day and his phone died, he will borrow somebody’s phone and give me a call and say mom I am fine.”
That phone call never came. It has been three months and three days and word of a badly decomposed corpse found earlier today in a shallow grave in the Western Pines community, presumably the skeletal remains of that missing person, spread quickly on social media.
Sean Nicholas
Sean Nicholas, Uncle of Missing Person
“We’ve been concentrating on this area and we heard there was a discovery, actually we saw it on the news source that goes out via social media. I decided to take a run out here because we are concentrating in this area. Many of our tips came that Jamal’s body is in this area, so we, I decided to just take a run out here today to be on the ground to report back to Jamal’s mom because she is in the States. She went last week for her birthday.”
This morning, sometime before nine o’clock a passerby who was walking along this feeder road which runs adjacent to the eight mile neighborhood, happened upon a grisly site. His dog, following the sharp smell of decaying meat, had led him to where the stiff had been buried.
Jose Luis Espat
Jose Luis Espat, Volunteer Investigator
“When we did the search at the eight mile’s farm. When we did that search, the same night of that search we had some people left behind to monitor the farm because we knew that this was on the media and we knew that there was a possibility that the perpetrators can come and retrieve the body and replace it somewhere else. So we had someone watching the farm. We got a call approximately about nine p.m. and when we got that call I immediately called Mr. Chester Williams and he told me that he would call me back. He called me back and told me that Mr. Ack, along with some other policemen, would be going to the farm. So I got a call from Mr. Ack and they told me that they wanted myself and the family to go along. I don’t believe that it was right to expose the family and myself. We don’t know what type of crossfire, if any, would have happened. I believe that if the police had gone to the scene that night, I don’t know what the guys were doing there, I can’t assume, but I do believe it has some sort of connection if it is indeed that this body found is Mr. Jamal Humes.”
The search for Jamal in the days after his disappearance, brought volunteers into this general vicinity. The lay of the land towards the end of the rainy season made it extremely difficult for the search party to arrive at this location.
Sean Nicholas
“We did come down this road, but we were unable to come all this way down due to water, it was flooding. Sometime in January. We came all the way up, about three hundred feet from here, by the old house out there that you see by that van and we weren’t able to come down any further.”
It has been a tough twelve weeks for the family. At the time of our interview with Sean Nicholas there was no certainty that the body lying beneath the surface of the dirt road was indeed that of his slain nephew.
Sean Nicholas
“We just really can’t give up on Jamal. We can’t just give up on our loved one because as I’m speaking here it brings tears to my eyes. Jamal is basically like my son, I raised him from he was like months old. He’s not only my nephew. I would never stop searching. If it takes me a hundred years, I would not stop searching.”
Late this evening, those who attended the post mortem examination, including Jose Luis Espat, confirmed independently that the remains were indeed those of the automotive technician.
Jose Luis Espat
“There are two motives I was looking at, as I said, at the several press conferences I had before. The main one would be [that] he was a witness, an eyewitness to a murder that occurred on Faber’s Road. The other was allegedly some sort of money mismanagement and there are several police officers’ names that have been called. So those were the two main motives that we were looking at from the onset of the investigation.”
Reporting for News Five, I am Isani Cayetano.
