2 Bze City men found guilty in diff. murder cases

It was a crime that seemed too senseless to be true: a man murdered because he told young boys to stop stealing mangoes. Today, the teenage gunman, later identified as eighteen year old David Jones, was found guilty of the murder of Lincoln Weston. The jury of four women and eight men deliberated for a little over two hours before returning the unanimous verdict. Jones will be sentenced tomorrow by Supreme Court Judge Wilfred Elrington. According to testimony delivered in court, the motive for the murder began on April twenty-sixth 2000, when Jones and a group of his friends decided to pick mangoes from a tree near the Government House on Regent Street. Fifty year old Lincoln Weston, a resident of the area, approached the group, telling them to leave. A scuffle ensued in which Weston stabbed Jason Gentle, one of the boys in the group. The youths left, only to return a short time later with a pump twelve shotgun and shot Weston several times.

Three months after Weston was gunned down for mangoes, another Belize City man lost his life, this time over his dog. Twenty-two year old Richard Cattouse, a resident of Kelly Street, was stabbed to death in July 2000 when he confronted a man from his neighborhood for mistreating his dog. Today, the man who was later charged with the crime, Stephen Smith, took the dock and was sentenced to life imprisonment by Judge Wilfred Elrington, after a twelve-member jury returned a guilty verdict.