Fatal stabbing behind Commercial Centre

The country’s three-week respite from murder ended today when two men stabbed each other early this morning in Belize City. And while the police say it was not the first time forty-three year old Victor Avilez and forty-two year Franklyn Stanford clashed, it was their last as Avilez died on the way to the hospital. News Five’s Jacqueline Woods has more.

Jacqueline Woods, Reporting
Victor Avilez and Franklyn Stanford reportedly got into an argument behind the Commercial Centre near the Belize City Swing Bridge around two-thirty this morning. Things got out of control and both men started stabbing each other with what appeared to be knives.

Zoila Clark, Sister of the Deceased
?A policeman came by my house and he said that my brother got stabbed. So we ask him if he dead and the man said he dead and so we gone to the morgue to identify the body, and yes it was my brother. ?

Zoila Clark says her brother was estranged from the family and basically kept to himself, but she says she was aware that he would often get into trouble after he had too much to drink. Clark says she does not know what happened by the river, only that he was stabbed multiple times and he fell into the water where police later found his body floating.

Zoila Clark
?I noh know what really happened, because it was before day. But one of my friends called me this morning and said that they were quarrelling for space to sleep out at the Commercial Centre. I noh really know what happened because before my mother gone to the States she paid for a room for him by Racecourse Street, but I noh know what gone on, so I can?t tell really what happened.?

Jacqueline Woods reporting for News Five.

Franklyn Stanford is in critical condition in the intensive care unit of the K.H.M.H.