Homecoming turns tragic for returning Belizean

She was returning to the jewel after eighteen years in Los Angeles…but Shawn Smith’s homecoming to the land of her birth lasted only a matter of hours. After a long trip through Mexico, she managed to hitch a ride with a family headed to Belize City. That ride ended just before midnight on Saturday night. According to police, the blue Subaru sedan in which Smith was a passenger was being driven by thirty-eight year old Theadius Young. When it reached the curve at mile eight, a white four door Honda Accord crossed the centre line and crashed head on into the vehicle. The thirty-seven year old Smith received head and body injuries and died on the spot. Another passenger, Adelia Gordon, broke both legs and fractured a shoulder. She told hospital authorities that she and Young and gone to the northern border to pick up her common law husband, Alton Murray, and it was at the border they met Smith who asked them for a ride to the city. Police say the driver of the Honda, forty-three year old Valentine Ferguson, told them that he just lost control of his car, which caused him to crash into the oncoming vehicle. Ferguson, a resident of Ladyville, was heading home at the time of the accident. He received cut wounds to his head and body and was treated and released from the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital. Another passenger, fifty-two year old Millicent Herrera, who was trapped in the vehicle, remains hospitalised with a broken leg. Police are expected to bring charges against Ferguson on Tuesday morning.