Man Shot on Gill Street in Wake of 3-Year-Old’s Murder

Tensions remain high tonight in the Gill Street area of south side Belize City, following the murder of three-year-old Etana Bennett. The toddler was sleeping along with her mother and father in their house, when a gunman took aim at their room from the neighboring yard. While Alva Moody was hit multiple times to the hand, buttocks and thigh, Etana was struck to the head by a bullet and died the following day. Still reeling from that murder, on Tuesday night, shots rang out again dangerously close to Etana house. A construction worker was injured to the foot, under the noses of the police stationed nearby. News Five’s Duane Moody reports.

Etana Bennett

Duane Moody, Reporting

In the wake of the murder of three-year-old Etana Bennett, shots rang out yet again on Gill Street on Tuesday night. Twenty-six-year-old Eric Tillett remains hospitalized at the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital recovering from a gunshot wound to the right foot. According to relatives, the bullet entered and exited his foot, breaking the bone in its path.  Tillett, who is a construction worker was on his way home when around eight-thirty someone a gunman hiding in an abandoned lot adjacent to his home fired a single shot at him.  The incident occurred a stone’s throw from a police checkpoint where a uniformed police officer and two B.D.F. soldiers were installed in front of Bennett’s house. The shooter nevertheless escaped and Tillett was rushed to the hospital for treatment. Police are yet to determine whether Tuesday night’s shooting is retaliatory for the murder of the baby girl.

The National Committee for Families and Children has since issued a statement entitled, End Violence Against Children, in which it says it is deeply saddened and outraged by the killing of yet another minor. The release reminds the public that according to Article Nineteen of the United Nations Conventions on the Rights of the Child, every child has the right to be protected from being hurt and mistreated, in body or mind.