Albert Valentine and a Minor are Indicted for Separate Murders in Punta Gorda Town
Albert Valentine
A pair of young men is tonight on remand at the Belize Central Prison after being arraigned for separate murders in Punta Gorda Town. Twenty-one-year-old Albert Valentine Junior, along with a fifteen-year-old minor, was indicted on two counts of murder when he appeared before Magistrate Emerson Banner on Monday. Both PG residents are accused of the stabbing deaths of sixty-one-year-old Antonio ‘Sapote’ Rodriguez and nineteen-year-old Jarrel Pop. The well-known taxi-man was butchered inside his vehicle near the Joe Taylor Bridge in mid-December, while the teenager’s mutilated body was found inside a well earlier this month. Diligent police work has resulted in the arrests of the minor and his accomplice who was nabbed in San Pedro last week. According to Superintendent Simeon Alvarez, their investigation has established a link between the suspects and the grisly murders.
On the Phone: Supt. Simeon Alvarez, O.C., Punta Gorda Police
“The seventeenth of January, 2016 both a fifteen-year-old minor and a twenty-one-year-old Albert Valentine Junior were both arrested and charged and taken before the magistrate in Punta Gorda Town for the crime of murder. Two counts of murder. One is upon the taxi driver, the late Antonio Rodriguez and the other one is for Jarrel Edward Pop, nineteen-years-old whose body was recovered on the tenth of January. So both of them were charged jointly for the crime of murder and they were remanded until the twenty-fourth of February, 2016.”
Simeon Alvarez
Isani Cayetano
“How were you guys able to make a connection between these particular suspects and the murder of the taxi driver?”
On the Phone: Simeon Alvarez
“Well, it is as a result of an intensive investigation carried out by the investigating team that gathered all evidence sufficient to arrest and charge both suspects. So they were connected based on the investigation being carried out. The motive for the taxi driver was that they wanted to get his firearm but at the time when he was stabbed he managed to run a little distance away from his vehicle with the firearm in his hand but was unable to use it so the suspects they fled the scene and he had the firearm in his possession. And the other one, I would not want to discuss that one as to the motive behind that one. I don’t want to discuss that one, the one with Jarrel Pop because we are still investigating and we believe that down the road there might be other persons being charged for conspiracy in respect of Jarrel Pop’s murder. Definitely we are continuing the investigation.”
