US Military Ammo Stolen from B.D.F.

Ladyville Police and the Belize Defence Force are investigating a robbery of thousands of rounds of military ammunition. That’s right, military ammunition stolen from a guarded B.D.F. facility on the Lord’s Bank road. The heist was discovered early this morning at what the B.D.F. call an echelon, a storage base for ammunitions and explosives. The investigation has so far been unable to determine exactly when it occurred. So how does military-grade ammunition get stolen from off a secure military base? Very easily, it appears. Mike Rudon has the story.

Mike Rudon, Reporting

The missing ammunition was being stored here at this facility in Lord’s Bank, complete with heavy metal gate, barbed-wire secure fence and even a guard tower with armed B.D.F. personnel. No weapons are stored here, but at around one-thirty this morning a patrol determined that security had been breached and two containers of ammunition being held for the US Army in training had disappeared.

Raymond Shepherd

Lt. Col. Raymond Shepherd, Chief of Staff, B.D.F.

“One of our security patrols discovered the breach of one of our holding cells for ammunition. We conducted a check and we discovered that a total of one thousand six hundred and eight five point five six and a thousand seven point six two ammunition were removed from that holding bay. These ammunition we have them in storage for our American counterparts who are here doing some training, so that the type of shelter or bay that they were in are not the type that we would normally keep that type of ammunition in.”

The ammunition is used in military M-sixteen or M-four rifles and is valued at approximately twenty thousand dollars. They were being kept in containers like these, easy to carry, so one person could have walked out with one in each hand. And that’s what investigators believed happened. They think the ammunition was taken out through the gate.

Lt. Col. Raymond Shepherd

“We don’t have enough information at this point to determine more or less when it occurred. The last time we did a check for one hundred percent accountability was the seventh of December. But we have a series of systems and policies in place to prevent these types of incidents, and in this case each one of those systems and policies was breached systematically. We believe that there are several people involved, either by their act or by their omission. In terms of the security procedures we have in place there, we have armed guards that conduct patrols on a routine basis, at a minimum of thirty minute intervals.”

The ammunition was kept separately from that used by the B.D.F., in a low security bay basically just to shelter it from the elements.  But that’s no consolation to Lieutenant Colonel Raymond Shepherd, and they are treating the situation with some urgency. The black eye is something that the B.D.F. certainly does not need.

Lt. Col. Raymond Shepherd

“The first step is to put measures in place to re-establish the systems that we have that were breached. There are some things that we can do immediately, and some things that have already been done. So we’ll put those back in place then we’ll do a check of what further we can do to prevent this type of incident from reoccurring. Our survival as an organization itself depends on the trust and confidence we get from the Belizean people that we serve and when things like this happen it definitely erodes the trust and confidence so that is one thing that we will definitely have to build back.”

Investigators also discovered that the interior and exterior perimeter chain link fence at the rear of the compound was cut, but they believe that was done only as a red herring.  Mike Rudon for News Five.

Shepherd says that the B.D.F. is currently conducting an internal check of their systems and anybody found responsible either through action or inaction will be dealt with to the fullest extent of the law.