Orange Walk man killed following contraband bust…
We lead tonight with the death of a nineteen year old following a shootout in a contraband bust early Thursday morning in the San Victor Village. The Customs Department was out in force today to do damage control at a press conference. The story is that a contingent of law enforcement officers—both B.D.F. soldiers, Anti-Drug Unit and Custom Officers—were on river patrol in Douglas Village where they confiscated four boats containing contraband goods. One report says that while transporting the goods to Orange Walk Town, the officers were met by four vehicles allegedly carrying the owners of the goods—some thirty plus persons of San Victor Village. The men alighted the pickups with machetes, sticks and stones and charged at the law enforcement officers. Warning shots were fired on the group and nineteen year old Onorio Oba, who sought refuge behind one of the pickups, was hit in the face. At about nine-thirty this morning, Oba died while receiving treatment at the K.H.M.H. Customs officials say that when they were attacked on Thursday, the officers were forced to respond with gunfire.
Gregory Gibson, Comptroller, Customs Department
“Several members—and I will use smugglers to describe them—became aware of the situation and attacked the patrol. Under the series of attack, the team naturally made an attempt to remove themselves from the area and avoid confrontation and left a canoe behind containing several cases of beers and other goods.”
Ian Haylock, Director of Enforcement, Customs Department
“There was some sort of premeditated arrangement with respect to what they were going to do. This right here is the Customs enforcement vehicle, which was damaged. The back glass for the vehicle is broken. A rock was hurled into the vehicle. The law enforcement officers were also assaulted. These were some of the machetes that were retrieved by the police that were tagged here and will be used as exhibit in respect to the offence. After this attempted seizure took place, several items were basically confiscated. What we had was fifty cases of Sol beer, three cases tomato, twelve cases assorted soft drink, five cases styling gel, fifteen cases pasta, fifteen sacks of rice, one sack of potato a sack of onion, twenty sacks of flour. Also, what was lost and basically because of the attempted invasion by the villagers were twenty cases of soft drink and twenty cases of Modelo beer.”
Fred Ford, O.C. of Investigation, Customs Department
“The vehicles were already parked obstructing Customs, they had to find a way to flee the area to secure themselves. They already had the cargo, they wanted to minimize any kind of damage or any kind of violence against the people. Our intention was at all times to avoid any kind of conflict or confrontation with this group, who have a history of every two, three weeks you have to have warning shots fired at this people so they could back off.”
Gregory Gibson
“The officers guns are being checked ballistically and at the end of the day the police investigations will reveal the state of affairs. I am happy as the comptroller and confident that the investigation will reveal that the officers used what was necessary of violent force to extricate themselves from a very violent situation that could have been a whole lot worse.”
