Missing OW Resident Found Dead
Oswaldo Vasquez
The search for thirty-one-year-old Oswaldo Vasquez ended tragically this morning when the body of the Orange Walk resident was found floating in the New River. The marketing officer at La Inmaculada Credit Union was reported missing by his wife on Sunday after Vasquez could not be located on Saturday night. Since then the family organized multiple searches until today when they got word from a tour operator that he spotted a body in the river near the A.S.R./B.S.I. compound while he was transporting tourists to Lamanai. News Five’s Duane Moody reports.
Duane Moody, Reporting
It was a gut-wrenching moment for family and friends as they stood at the foot of the Toll Bridge in Orange Walk this morning. The remains of Oswaldo Vasquez were removed from the area and carted away in the pan of a police pickup truck. The body was transported to Ladyville where it awaits a post-mortem examination. The mutilated body of the thirty-one-year-old was discovered floating in the New River in proximity to the B.S.I. factory and in the vicinity of where he was last seen alive on Saturday night. Vasquez was inebriated and so was his wife’s brother; they were all travelling in the vehicle along with Vasquez’s son and daughter when he alighted the vehicle at the gas station on the Philip Goldson Highway and headed along the road towards the B.S.I. compound.
Voice of: Soraida Perez
Voice of: Soraida Perez, Relative of Deceased
“She said Oswaldo stepped out of the vehicle and we were after him and then he was close to an ASR vehicle and I really didn’t see where he got to after that. I don’t know if he went into the vehicle or he went by the bushes because the area is very dark. She had the two children with her so some spells she went after him, holding him back telling him to come back in the vehicle. She went back in the vehicle because she had the children with her, Luke and Lyn. She can’t leave the children there and then totally go after him.”
Vasquez could not be found and his family headed home. Several attempts were made to reach him by cell phone, until later that night when a man, believed to be a security guard, answered to say that he had his phone and wallet.
Voice of: Soraida Perez
“The man said, no it’s not your husband. This is now the security, the watchman that is in front of L & R, told her it’s not your husband. Your husband is here giving trouble so come for him. And then she asked where and the man told her it’s in front of L & R. And then my husband, my son, my mother-in-law and my sister-in-law went into that vehicle immediately. They went out with the sole intention of picking up Oswaldo and bringing him home. When they reached there, the watchman told them he is no longer here. He went off and then he stoned me with the phone and the wallet. And then they were like but how did he went off. They went by that road and we didn’t see him. So he said, he went beside there and then he ended up to the back gate. But how? That’s impossible. We were there searching, we were there with tennis, with long pants and it was impossible for us to go through the side where he said he went because that side is full of branches and prickle.”
But the phone was actually the property of his brother-in-law, which Vasquez had mistakenly picked up when he got out of the vehicle. The security guard was detained by police on Tuesday after an audio recording captured an exchange of words between him and Vasquez.
Voice of: Soraida Perez
“My brother-in-law’s wife that lives in San Felipe had called me around 9:33 and she told me, yo know what Sor, I was calling Ruben and I’m hearing. I thought it was him arguing with someone. Estaba escuchando bien she say – because she is in Spanish – estaba escuchando bien, pero no es Ruben, es Oswaldo. At that point she didn’t tell me she was recording the call, right. At first she didn’t record it immediately. She heard that call for about forty minutes because she had called her husband’s phone because Oswaldo by mistake took his brother-in-law’s phone thinking it was his one. And then she called and it looked like the phone answered and didn’t know. So she heard all the call for about forty minutes till eventually when she started hearing like arguing and so forth then she realised that’s not too correct so she started recording the call.”
Melinda Montes is Oswaldo’s sister-in-law; she has been chief among those who organized the searches for Vasquez.
Voice of: Melinda Montes
Voice of: Melinda Montes, Sister-in-law of Deceased
“We are searching because we want to find him alive. If he is hurt in the bush, probably he cannot come out, something might have happened to him, he might have got a cut, he’s bleeding, he’s there, maybe he is punishing. But we don’t know. So we went all into the bush but my little brother said when they went all around where the watchman said my brother-in-law went, he said that at the back, he saw a spot there where like they lift something from there, like somebody was lying down there.”
Today, the search party was out early checking in the Chan Pine Ridge area of Orange Walk which is in the opposite direction to where Vasquez went missing. Just after ten o’clock, the family got the heartbreaking news that a body was spotted in the river. Montes describes the condition in which the body was discovered.
Voice of: Melinda Montes
“He has a big opening to the side here. And I believe if a crocodile was eating him, he wouldn’t have a big split here. And then one of his hand that he got, only this piece here – from the shoulder to like the elbow, only that was there – the face was actually gone and only the skull was set to the back. It’s a really horrible sight to find a person you cared for.”
Duane Moody for News Five.
