Two bodies recovered from shipwreck
Two bodies have been recovered in the aftermath of last week’s shipwreck off Wee Wee Caye. They have been identified as Belizean Ibrahim Adamu and Nigerian Henry Osbgbue. Today, an aerial search continued to look for the two other passengers still missing and presumed drowned in Thursday night’s tragic sinking of an unnamed vessel enroute from Baja Mar, Honduras to Dangriga. Today, the captain of the boat, Julio Caballero and his crewmen, Roberto Thomas and Eluterio Sanchez, all Hondurans, are in the custody of police and immigration officials in Dangriga. In an interview with News Five, Captain Caballero told us that Adamu visited his home in Honduras three times on Thursday, imploring him to make the trip to Dangriga. Caballero says he knew Adamu as a friend he had met five years earlier and agreed to make the trip as a favor. He denies knowing any of the other passengers who boarded the unmarked 25-foot dugout canoe bound for Belize. The sea was rough and the going was slow given the weight of the boat and the single 25-horse power engine which propelled it. When the boat left Baja Mar, a Garifuna village near Puerto Cortez, it was midday but by midnight, the vessel had not reached port.”
The sea off Dangriga is still rough today, so rough that police have not been able to tow the unnamed Honduran dory that capsized off Wee Wee Caye Thursday night into town for inspection. The boat’s captain, Julio Caballero, says what started out as a favor to a friend ended as a late night disaster. Caballero says the boat had already surmounted the worst of the waves in the Gulf of Honduras and was a mere 15 miles from Dangriga when suddenly, it began to take on water.
Julio Caballero, Captain
“I saw that the boat was going down, it was filling up with water. I told the passengers, the boat is going down, jump into the water but don’t let go of the boat. But the people began to panic. I swam to the caye and I tried to get help from the watchman at the caye. There was a little boat there and I went to try to get the people from the sea, two by two.”
Without so much as a lifejacket, the passengers clung to the boat as they waited to be rescued. Caballero says when he went back a third time, he realized that four of the passengers had disappeared.
Julio Caballero
“At that time I didn’t think that anyone was going to die. We were close to the caye. We had passed the worst in the Gulf. I didn’t expect things to happen the way they did. I don’t know what caused the boat to go down. I felt really upset when I realized that four people were missing. I am still upset about it.”
Caballero is a fisherman by trade who knows Belizean waters, but says this was the first time he had brought passengers with him. He claims he was simply going to drop them off in Dangriga and head back to Honduras. But the random list of passengers, including 2 men from Sierra Leone, 4 Nigerians, a Nicaraguan, 4 Hondurans and 3 Belizeans, raises the question of whether this was a magnanimous favour or the simple business of smuggling human cargo.
Janelle Chanona
“The question now is whether Julio Caballero will be charged with any wrongdoing. Dangriga police say they are treating the case as an accident. Immigration officials here tell News Five that while he might not face charges of illegal entry, there is still the issue of why he did not present himself to immigration officials upon entering Belizean waters. Reporting from Dangriga, I am Janelle Chanona.”
News Five understands that only one of the survivors suffered any injury as a result of the ordeal. Nicaraguan Maria del Carmen was clinging to the boat’s gas tank while in the water and received burns to her chest. She remains at the Southern Regional Hospital. This afternoon, the body of Ibrahim Abraham was laid to rest in Dangriga. According to his wife, Dorothy Abraham, the two were returning to Belize after honeymooning in Honduras. In a brief statement to News Five, Abraham said she and her husband didn’t know any of the other passengers on board. Besides the Honduran crew, none of the other passengers have been detained by either police or immigration. There were 14 passengers on board when the boat left Honduras.
