Shoot-out terrorizes southside Belize City

The ghost of gangsters past is today haunting Belize City. Almost three years to the day after an historic truce was supposed to have stopped the violence, gunshots rang out across the southside. But this was no middle of the night disturbance; it took place in broad daylight directly in front of one of the city’s most crowded primary schools.

The shoot-out which covered parts of Faber’s Road, Waight Street and the entire length of Kraal Road has left the neighborhood in shock. Although the area is no stranger to criminal activity, it is the first time residents say they have witnessed a shoot-out of this magnitude.

Eyewitness 1

“It sound like a pop shot gun, but when I run to the side there, I see a lot of hole in the car and so it look like some heavy bullet that gone through it.”

Eyewitness 2

“When I run out there, everybody say Michelle get shot, and so when I look I see her lying down on the street and I see her the cry.”

Eyewitness 3

“Even now there is shock, even now we can’t get the children to settle down. I went from different classes and told them that in situation like this what they are to do because they are kind of struck they are, we still can’t get them to settle down.”

Annie Wade, who is the Principal of Saint John Vianney School, said parents had just dropped off their children and the students were about to begin classes when they were startled by the sounds of gunshots in front of the school.

Annie Wade, Principal, St. John Vianney School

“The idea that we got was the car slowed down at the speed bump. The speed bump in front of the school. We saw the two vehicles coming, but the car slowed down at the speed bump and then the shooting went off. There were distinct; more than one gunshot sounds. It sounds like more than one gun went off. Luckily no children were on the street coming in late to school, otherwise they might have been hurt.”

But while no school children were on Faber?s Road, Wade said she saw some parents and other people running for cover inside the houses opposite the school grounds. According to witnesses, a light colored car bearing taxi license plates was traveling at a moderate speed down Faber?s Road. Just behind the vehicle was an old rusty brown pickup, filled with young men. According to a vendor who wishes to remain anonymous, she was sitting by her cart about fifty yards away from the school gate, when the pickup passed her and then she heard the first shot ring out.

Eyewitness 4

“A car pass before the van, right. It just come down and start shot. When I hear the first shot, I never frightened or nothing, but when I hear the lot of shots I see scatter, a lot of smoke and gone through it.”

Witnesses say they do not think the two men, who were inside the car, knew that they were being followed because the vehicle was not speeding down Faber?s Road. It wasn’t until the car slowed down at the speed bump that the pickup truck then sped up to it and opened fire. Principal Wade said it took at least four seconds for the car to get over the bump. Time that seemed like an eternity for the students and teachers at Saint John Vianney. While most of the students were inside there classrooms, there were over two hundred boys and girls from the school’s middle division inside the school’s church. The church was directly inline with the speed bump and the shoot out.

Annie Wade

“We were concerned because the church was open, the door was open from the church and the main shooting went off from right in front there of the church and the children when they heard the shooting they tend to try and peep through the window and through the door to see what was going on. Luckily the teachers got on it and they made the children went down real low because the momentum of the vehicle, they had almost stop, because the car couldn’t pass the bump and the pickup caught up on it there, so actually there was a lot of shots went off right there, some in the air, there was people just shooting.”

Wade said the car then quickly sped off with the pick up truck in hot pursuit. The shooting continued, as the vehicles sped down Faber?s Road, then turned into Waight Street and onto Kraal Road. It was here the first casualty of the incident took place. Twenty one year old Michelle Young was just returning from shopping when she heard several gunshots from behind. Young, who was riding on a bicycle, tried to make it to safety inside a neighbors yard, but it was too late.

Audrey Young, Mother

“I mi deh inside my house, when I hear this big noise, you know. Like when a car crash and something and I run out. Everybody run out, you know and when I gone out, I see my daughter lie on the ground there and her foot was bleeding, you know and like she got this big swelling on her hand and then I see this big thing the bulge out of her hand and then I ask the neighbor them what happened. They tell me that she got shot.”

Michelle was quickly picked up by a family friend and taken to the hospital where she was treated and is said to be in a stable condition. But Young’s shooting did not slow down the firing, as the vehicles sped up Kraal Road. Witnesses in the area said everyone in the neighborhood was running for cover. Standing at the corner of Kraal Road and Kut Avenue was Michael Palacio.

Micheal Palacio, Eyewitness

“I was by Kraal Road there, I heard a vehicle coming and suddenly when I look towards the side, we saw the car spin round and it gone straight into a fence and little while after that we hear a lot of bullets de shoot. Bang, bang, bang like that and after that the bally done pass, you know, and little while after the police they start to come in.”

Q: “What happened to the gentlemen inside the car?”

Michael Palacio

“Well the gentlemen, the two gentlemen inside the car when the car, they jump out and hop the fence and they gone into some different yards and so on.”

Q: “The shooting was only coming from the guys in the open back pick up?”

Michael Palacio

“In the open back pickup.”

Q: “Nobody inside the car was returning fire?”

Michael Palacio

“No. No. Only the pickup.”

The taxi finally came to a stop when it crashed into the fence of Florine Bonner’s house. Bonner said she was just about to cook when she heard gunshots.

Florine Bonner, Witness

“And I heard the shot. Three shots in a row and I came out and I went into my room, because I knew I had these little boys standing by the door. I went into the room to look to see, to see if it was really gunshots and when I saw the car right up into the fence, then I got frightened and I said my God, the children and the children were right by the door. So I run come by the side and they were not there and I begin to get very, very frightened and upset and I start calling and, but afterwards they was to the back of the yard, to the back of the house.”

Although witnesses say the police arrived on the scene quickly, by the time they got there the pick up was no where to be found and the occupants of the taxi had already fled.