Three injured in separate shootings
A Belize City man is recovering from gunshot wounds after a shooting incident on Vernon Street last night. According to police reports, twenty-seven year old Michael Welch was playing pool with his friends at the Red House Bar, at the corner of Vernon Street and East Collect Canal just after seven, but unbeknownst to the group, a still unidentified shooter was taking aim at them from across the canal. A single shot shattered the window and hit Welch on the left side of his abdomen. He was rushed to the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital where he underwent a six-hour surgery to repair a number of damaged organs. Welch is currently listed as serious but stable. If you have any information, which can assist authorities with their investigations, please call the nearest police station or 9-2-2.
Police were again busy a few hours later in response to a report of shots fired on Coney Drive in the wee hours of Wednesday morning. Around one fifteen, twenty-two year old Edna Riveroll says she was asleep when a loud bang reverberated through her house. When she got up to investigate, she discovered that her front sliding glass door had been smashed to pieces and what appeared to be bullet holes covered her kitchen wall. Police are seeking one person who they believe can provide them with useful information about this incident.
Meanwhile Orange Walk cops have detained a minor for questioning after he reported shooting one of his cousins during a hunting expedition near Carmelita Village. Police say last night, twenty-two year old Roberto Requena and his seventeen-year-old cousin borrowed a family member’s sixteen-gauge shotgun to go hunting in an area near the village called Molpolshol. But around nine thirty, the minor, who was carrying the weapon, pulled the trigger with as many as five of the shotgun’s pellets hitting Requena in his upper leg and hip. Requena was rushed to the Northern Regional Hospital and we understand he was scheduled to give his version of events to the cops earlier today. Authorities say they are treating the case as an accident.
