King’s Park resident is executed as he left his uncle’s funeral

Vince Martinez Jr.

On Wednesday afternoon, a Belize City man attended his uncle’s funeral in Ladyville. A little over an hour later, he lay dead in a pool of blood…shot to the head as he sat in a bus shelter. Today, the Police are looking for a motive and a murderer, while the family of King’s Park resident Vince Martinez Jr. struggles to understand the brutal execution style killing. It happened at around six pm Wednesday evening in front of the Puma Service Station. It’s one of the busiest times of the day on one of the nation’s busiest highways, but that didn’t stop the brazen murder. News Five was on the scene shortly after it happened and Mike Rudon has the story.

Mike Rudon, Reporting

At seven-thirty the body of twenty-seven year old Vince Martinez Jr. lay in the bus shelter where he was killed, apparently with a single shot to the head. Police managed traffic while awaiting Scenes of Crime personnel. It seems incredible on such a busy thoroughfare, but indications are that one gunman ran from the direction of Marage Road and shot Martinez to the head as he waited in the shelter. He then ran to a waiting car which sped off.

Christopher Noble

ASP Christopher Noble, Rural Executive Officer, Belize Police Department

“What we know is that the Police did get information of a shooting. We came out here. We met one male person with an apparent injury to the head. The person succumbed on scene. We have a person that we may be looking for not from this area. We’ve established that the gentleman does not reside in the Ladyville Area, but may have been coming from an event in the Ladyville Area.”

Vince Martinez is from King’s Park in Belize City, but he travelled to Ladyville for his uncle’s funeral on Wednesday. But even as his uncle was placed in the ground, his own death was waiting right around the corner. His family got the news a little after eight Wednesday night. For them it is a double blow. They have just buried their uncle, and now they have lost their brother and son. His sister Tiffara says she can’t explain it, but she knew something bad would happen.

Tiffara Bowen

Tiffara Bowen, Sister of Vincent Martinez

“From in the day when I came from work to go to the funeral I just had this feeling. I looked at my brother and I could see that…this feeling just came over me. I told my cousin you know Adrian, look at my brother…I said…I got this bad feeling in my stomach. We tried talking to him and he wouldn’t listen. He wouldn’t listen. We tried talking to him because he was drinking and he just wouldn’t listen.”

Nobody knows Vince Martinez’s last thoughts that day, or if he sensed what was coming. He was drunk at the funeral and though his family tried to get him to go home, he refused. And that was the last time they saw him alive.

Tiffara Bowen

“He was in the bus. When we were going to the burial ground in Lord’s Bank he was in the bus with us. He wanted to have a smoke in the back of the bus but we told him…you know Vince this is a church bus so you can’t do that. And when we got to the burial ground like for some reason he just didn’t want to go back home. We put him in our cousin’s car, he came out. We put him in our cousins’ pickup back, he came out. We put him on the bus and he came back out. The last time I saw my brother was when he was walking back in the burial ground.”

They believe that he then made his way to the bus shelter where he was waiting to catch a bus home. As Scenes of Crime personnel processed the scene Wednesday night, some of Martinez’s family members stood around, in shock and crying. He was certainly no saint in life, but he was loved.

Tiffara Bowen

“I won’t say that my brother was a saint, because I wasn’t around him twenty-four seven, but I know he was someone who loved his family and he loved his two daughters. He left behind two beautiful daughters…two daughters. And whoever did this…I just hope that…I’m not saying they would come forward, I’m not saying justice because nowadays justice is not in our country because people are dying every single day and they can’t find who is doing it. But I just hope that God is seeing what is happening. I just hope that God would let them have their turn.”

Martinez’s family says he sometimes ran with the wrong crowd, but they still have no idea who would deliberately take his life. Mike Rudon for News Five.

Martinez received one single gunshot wound to the right side of the head. Based on witness reports, Police are already looking for persons of interest, but when we checked this evening nobody had been detained.