Missing San Pedro Man Turns Up Dead!
Miguel Arroyo
Almost two weeks after he disappeared, the decomposing body of Miguel Arroyo was discovered on an island near San Pedro. The twenty-three-year-old San Pedro fisherman headed to a store on the island and that was the last time his family had contact with him. Despite joint searches by family and police, it was not until Saturday that members of the search party discovered his body. A postmortem conducted on the scene certified that he died from blunt force trauma to his head. News Five’s Andrea Polanco headed to San Pedro today and files this report.
Andrea Polanco, Reporting
Miguel Arroyo’s body was found on an island located one and a half mile north of San Pedro in the lagoon area Saturday afternoon. The missing man had been murdered. Twenty-three-year-old Arroyo was a San Pedro fisherman who was last seen alive on Monday, September tenth. A relative, who wishes to appear off camera, says that Arroyo left home to go to the corner store – but he never returned.
Voice of: Relative of the Deceased
“We saw him Monday, he came and he took a shower and everything and that was it. From Monday we didn’t see him and then until Wednesday his brother called and asked if we had seen his brother and we told him no. I asked him if he wasn’t with them, but he said no and that his mom and dad had been trying to call him but his phone goes straight to voicemail. So, I waited until Thursday and noticed that all his fishing gears and everything was still outside and then I found that a little bit weird. Because he never does that, he never goes out without taking care of his stuff and he always puts his stuff away.”
When the family realized something wasn’t right, that Friday, September fourteenth, they reported Arroyo missing. And after searching for more than a week – family members discovered his body. They say they were able to locate the body after he appeared in a dream to his brothers.
Voice of: Relative
“I just know that they found him on an island here on the lagoon side. How they found him? I don’t know because it was just his brother who was the one who found him.”
Andrea Polanco
“You mentioned that he appeared in a dream to some of the family members?”
Voice of: Relative
“Yes he did. He just showed them the way where to go. We don’t really know what happened but at least we have closure because all we wanted was to find the body and they did find it. So, we know where he is now and we can go to the grave and go visit, carry flowers or anything that we want to now.”
His decomposing body was discovered with injuries to the head – which the post mortem certified was the cause of death. Police say that they have information that Arroyo was involved in an altercation days before he disappeared.
Alejandro Cowo
ASP Alejandro Cowo, O.C., C.I.B., Belize City
“San Pedro police visited an area about a mile and a half by the lagoon in San Pedro. About seventy five feet inside the bushes, they observed the decomposing body of a male persona and it was identified as that of Miguel Arroyo Hernandez, who had been missing since the tenth of September 2018. He was identified by a family member because of the tattoos he had on his chest. An onsite post-mortem was conducted on the body and at the conclusion the doctor certified the cause of the death to be blunt force trauma to the head. The police had a suspect and that person was detained. And as I had mentioned in a previous interview, there was nothing to link him to it. But we know that he had some sort of problem with some individuals before his disappearance.”
The family says, however, they have no idea why he was killed. They claim that they don’t know about any problems he may have had and so they don’t know who would have had a motive to kill him. According to the family, the fisherman had hopes of enlisting with the Coast Guard, but in the mean time he invested his time and passion in the fishing business. They describe him as an easy going person who avoided conflict.
Voice of: Relative
“Who did it and why they did it, we don’t know because he was a loving person, he got along with everyone and he had like this nice energy and he had a beautiful soul. He was friendly to everyone, very polite and he never messed around with no one. He did his fishing. He sold his fish and he always came home. Just recently he came to rent over here from my mom. He was always in his room and didn’t cause any trouble or anything.”
Andrea Polanco
“So, he was a fisherman – and you told me he had other ambitions, he wanted to join the coast guard as well?”
Voice of: Relative
“Yeah he had a lot of dreams. He wanted to join the coast guard because that was one of the biggest dreams that he had and he was working on that. And unfortunately, he couldn’t.”
Reporting for News Five, I’m Andrea Polanco.
