Police offer update in recent murders
San Pedro police are questioning the common-law wife of a man who was stabbed to death last Friday night or early Saturday morning inside his yard. Twenty-six year old Rafael Canti was found dead around five Saturday morning by the same woman who told police that she found his body when she opened her door that morning. She said she waited up all night for Canti to come home and that she had not slept at all. She added that she heard no noise outside her house to suggest that he was attacked in his yard. Initially police were following leads that Canti might have been stabbed during a fight he was involved in at a bar on the island. However, they now have a different view: that he was killed at home. This is because the post mortem examination yesterday determined that the stab that penetrated his heart would not have allowed him time to reach home. Canti’s common-law wife of three years is also the mother of his two children. Police are now interviewing the neighbours and say that Canti and his wife have had a history of domestic violence.
Meanwhile, the father of the two fifteen year old girls who burnt to death last week Monday inside their home in Georgetown Village, Stann Creek has been arrested and charged. Fifty-eight year old carpenter, Carlos Ramirez, was charged today with two counts of manslaughter by negligence and two counts of causing death by careless conduct. Ramirez met bail this afternoon of five thousand dollars and was ordered to return to court on April twenty-fifth. The cause of the blaze is still undetermined.
In Orange Walk, police continue to look for two men they believe can help them solve the double murders of Nazim Romero and Jose Ricalde.
Authorities believe Alfredo Urbina and Ronaldo Marchand may be in hiding because they were involved with the disappearance of Alden Hall, who went missing the week before the murders of Romero and Ricalde. Both men were shot while at Urbina’s house and police say it’s all drug-related. At first, their prime suspect was Luis Cardenas, who is a friend of Hall’s but now their investigations have led them to another man from Belize City. Although their focus has shifted from Cardenas, police still suspect that he was involved in the shootings. Last Friday Orange Walk police had detained a woman who was intimately connected with their new prime suspect for the double murders, with the hope that they might be led to him. However that detention did not yield any new details and she was released. Police have also impounded the car in which they believe Alden Hall was picked up the day he went missing. That vehicle belongs to Urbina, one of the men who are in hiding.
