New year opens with deadly violence

The year may have ended optimistically with only two murders being recorded in the entire month of December…but 2004 is proving to be something else. Before its first dawn there were already two bodies in the K.H.M.H. morgue, both the victims of stab wounds. This morning I tried to piece together the tragic details.

Jacqueline Woods, Reporting

The splattered blood on the fence, boards, basketball court and ground is all that Kendale Dudley Robinson left behind as he ran away from his attacker through Majestic Alley. The twenty-three year old Robinson apparently got into an argument with someone known only as Sheldon over what police believe to be a shirt. He received a single stab to the left side of his neck and collapsed about a hundred yards from where he was assaulted. Robinson, who had friends in the neighbourhood, was still alive when two young men came to his rescue.

Friend of Kendale #1

“I just the come from the club, me and my friend right here the night when I see my balli right there the sit down with a wound in his the neck. And they tell me that he and another homeboy just got into a trouble. So we just tek the man in a taxi and rushed him to the hospital.”

Friend of Kendale #2

“All ah we homeboy tell we he can’t make it because dah inna the vein the man get it, but we still had faith in the man and we rush him to the hospital and it is there the man died.”

Jacqueline Woods

“We understand the argument was over a shirt, do you know if this is so?”

Friend of Kendale #1

“Dah noh after no shirt, mami, he mi di trip from the night. He mi want go out to the club, check. That was on his mind, it was just a mind thing, check.”

Friend of Kendale #3

“That is why everybody say that was on his mind. Earlier, before I gone to the club, he come to me and tell me, Ronnie, bam, he got a little fifteen dollars and he want a suit, but I tell the man I noh got no suit to give him.”

It’s not sure how long Robinson was left bleeding on the ground, but the young men believe he could have lived if he had received help sooner.

Friend of Kendale #1

“Nobody noh want help ah. Dah me and my lee bwai put ah inna a taxi and ker ah. Nobody want to help the man, check. Once help was about, he would mi live, but no help nevah de bout.”

Angelita Staine, Grandmother of Deceased

“I always encourage him, I always try to advise him. In the morning I said to him, Kendale what is your resolution for the new year? Are you going to church? I said I would like you to go to school; I am going to ask someone to help you with your math and English. Because I said it is not so nice when you get a letter and someone has to read it, you want to read it on your own. He said, “I am not ready to go to church, I am not ready to go to no school, I am not ready yet,” and he walked through the door.”

That was the last time Angelita Staine saw her grandson alive. Staine says Robinson’s murder is the first for 2004 and she believes it won’t be the last.

Angelita Staine

“No matter how the police man they try, no matter what they try, it is till going to be killing, killing, killing until the master come.”

Belize City police acted quickly and have detained one person in connection with the murder. However, because they have not charged him with the crime, his name has not yet been released.