Cop Found Guilty of Manslaughter

Alpheus Parham

A cop accused of murdering a Belize City man detained at the Caye Caulker Police Station has been found guilty of the lesser charge of murder. The verdict was reached by a jury of six men and six women after five days of hearing evidence in the case and five hours of deliberation today. Police Constable Alpheus Parham was charged for murder for the shooting death of thirty-one year old Alex Goff. On May tenth, 2010, Goff was in lockdown at the Caye Caulker Police Station when other Police officers heard loud talking, then a bang. When they rushed to the area they found Goff with a single gunshot wound to the middle of the forehead. Only Parham was in the immediate area. Immediately after the shooting, Parham walked out of the cell-block and left the building, and was only apprehended the next day. Parham in his defense had stated that there was a struggle for the gun and it went off, with the bullet striking Goff in the head. There was nobody to refute that testimony, since nobody else was in the holding area when the incident occurred. With that evidence before them, the jury decided that Parham was guilty of manslaughter but not murder. Parham will be sentenced on February sixteenth. He was represented by attorney Simeon Sampson.