One dead after cold-blooded Sunday shooting

Another Belize City family is in mourning tonight after their loved one was gunned down on Sunday afternoon. News Five’s Jacqueline Godwin had the gruesome details.

Bernadette Bennett, Mother of Deceased
?When I heard the gunshot, I thought it was dynamite. I seh why them children the play with dynamite, they wa give people heart attack. And then I hear the ambulance pass, and I seh well Lord pray fi me that nobody fu me in the ambulance.?

Jacqueline Godwin, Reporting
According to witnesses, around two-thirty on Sunday afternoon twenty-seven year old Perfolio August, better known as Dickie Budd, had just bought a two dollar phone card at Tan Liang Shop, located at the corner of Woodpecker and Faber?s road when he was shot by a lone gunman. August stumbled out onto the street but soon collapsed. Today blood stains mark the spot where August fell. Horrified onlookers say the shooter then stood over him and fired several more shots.

Bernadette Bennett
?I walk up to the scene and see him on the ground. I ask one of his friends, Roy who do this to Dickie? And he just grabbed me put me in his shoulder and tell me seh, you noh need to see this. You remember Budd the way Budd use to be you, don?t need to see this.?

Bernadette Bennett says she was waiting for her son to come home to do a barbeque for the family. As for a motive to the crime, Bennett says August was someone who loved to fish and did not give trouble.

Bernadette Bennett
?Well Dickie dah noh wa bad person. Dickie noh hang out pan the street because he dah noh wa gang person. Dickie noh get involve inna fights, trouble. If fi he brother get into quarrel, fight with anybody pan the street, he wah tell them, watch ya unu crash that cause somebody wah get hurt. He neva tek up for his brother, he no tek up for the other person, he always try make keep thing. When he drink he kinda aggressive, yes, but he dah noh wah violent person.?

The shooter has been described as a Creole descent man with short hair, wearing a three quarter pants and white T-shirt.

Bernadette Bennett
?I noh say that they will pay through no violence, but I know they will pay because the good Lord promise we vengeance is mine. And he will take vengeance on my son?s death fu me. I noh need to go out deh fu fight nobody or mek my son fight nobody.?

Jacqueline Godwin for News Five.

Police say they do not have a motive for the killing, but have detained one person for questioning. The murder of Perfolio August is the twenty-first of 2006.