Two detained after high speed chase
A shootout in the streets of downtown Belize City has left two men in custody and the cops with more questions than answers. According to press officer G. Michael Reid, around 10:00 on Wednesday night a mobile patrol responded to a report of shots fired on Albert Street. When the officers pulled up to the intersection of Church and Albert, they spotted a maroon Cadillac leaving the area in a hurry. Sirens blaring, the patrol ordered the car to stop, but the vehicle took off heading south towards St. John’s Cathedral with the cops right on their tail. Officers fired several shots at the car but the chase ran the length of Regent Street, over the Swing Bridge and ended…where? Right in the parking lot of the Queen Street police station. That’s right, the lead-footed getaway driver pulled into the lion’s den and he and his co-pilot were immediately detained. One of the men was later treated for a flesh wound, after he was grazed on the neck by a bullet. Whether the injury was caused by the police or another shooter has yet to be ascertained. Subsequent investigations by members of the police department have confirmed that the shots fired on Albert Street did come from the Caddy, but because the car turned up clean, police were left tracing the route of the car chase. So far they have not recovered any weapons. As to the identity of the two men detained, police have yet to release their names but we understand that one hails from George Street, while the other lives on Jane Usher Boulevard. Police sources indicate this is not their first brush with the law.
Meanwhile, police are still looking for two masked men who robbed a tortilla factory at gunpoint in the middle of the afternoon. According to the manager of Golden Corn Tortilla Factory on Cemetery Road in Belize City, around 2:30 Wednesday afternoon, the two bandits burst into the business place armed with a handgun and demanded money. The manager and another employee handed over jewellery and an undisclosed amount of cash. The robbers have yet to be detained, and anyone with information about this incident is asked to please contact the nearest police station.
But another man who tried to rob a Cemetery Road business is tonight enjoying the comforts of police custody. According to the cops, twenty-five year old Wayne Castillo, a resident of Flamboyant Street in Belize City, has been arrested and charged with robbery in connection with an incident earlier this week. On Monday, an employee of Charro’s Snack Shop reported that two men armed with a knife, forced him to hand over cash and jewellery. Police are still pursuing a second suspect.
Six months after San Ignacio police bagged the bandits behind a brazen robbery, tonight two of them begin serving their sentences for the crime. According to authorities, twenty-two year old Kareem Ara and thirty-one year old Kurt Morgan will spend the next nine years behind bars after being convicted on charges of aggravated burglary, damage to property and wounding. The duo’s accused accomplices, fifty-one year old Alexander Laing and eighteen year old Lionel Henry, were acquitted of the charges against them. The fifth defendant in this case, Deon Augustine, who had escaped to Mexico but was handed over to Belizean officials in September, will start his legal journey next week on the same three charges. All this is good news for the victim, bill collector Zane Robinson, who on the night of April twenty-seventh, was awakened from sleep at his home in San Ignacio, beaten and robbed of more than one hundred thousand dollars in cash and cheques. Only nine thousand, five hundred dollars of the twenty-five thousand in cash was recovered by police.
