Brooks’ accusations contradicted by J.P.
The May second holdup of over a hundred people on the Hummingbird Highway and the accompanying cold-blooded murder of a B.D.F. volunteer has dominated the headlines and shaken the confidence of an entire nation. But in recent days the controversy has shifted away from the horror of the crime to the tactics used by authorities in their attempt to solve it. Questions first arose over the lack of police preparedness that would allow a truckload of bandits to boldly ride halfway across the nation in broad daylight without official hindrance. They were compounded by mass roundups in the Hispanic suburbs of Belmopan where suspects were publicly accused and their belongings seized, only to have it later come out that the people detained had nothing to do with the crime. And only last week we learned of two more suspects: Alfonso Teul and Eluterio Vasquez, arrested in Stann Creek and now languishing in jail on murder charges… despite the solid testimony of Belizean co-workers and supervisors who swear they were picking oranges at the time of the crime. Point man on the publicly prosecuted case has been Police Commissioner Ornel Brooks… who yesterday laid out a barrage of accusations against the two based on what he said was irrefutable evidence of their guilt. At the heart of his allegations were positive I.D.’s he said were made by witnesses at the crime scene.
Ornel Brooks, Commissioner of Police
“On Saturday morning last, these five witnesses in Belize City physically identified these people on a lineup identification parade. These identification parades were witnessed by two justices of the peace namely Belize City Councilor Danny Madrid, one, and also Mr. Santos, Max Santos.”
To check out the merits of Brooks’ allegations News Five’s Stewart Krohn today contacted one of those J.P.’s, Danny Madrid, to find out just how an I.D. parade worked. What Madrid reported was more than we bargained for. In the parade he observed, that for Eluterio Vasquez, three out of the four witnesses failed to identify Vasquez as being on the scene. Maybe Commissioner Brooks was referring to another I.D. parade… or maybe another crime… but if the rest of his words were as misleading as the ones we checked up on, it just may be that the wrong people are behind bars.
