Quarrel among friends end in two more killings
Before the sun dawned on Saturday morning two more people would die on the streets of the city.
Patrick Jones, Reporting
The murder of twenty-two year old Mark Anthony Matthews, also known as Mark Saragosa, at the junction of Mahogany Street and Western Avenue on Saturday morning, did not take long for the police to solve. According to Police Press Officer, G. Michael Reid, Matthews was shot at least three times and two Belize City men, Mark Flowers and Saul Cardona Junior, have been arrested and charged with murder.
G. Michael Reid, Police Press Officer
“Information is telling us that it was a prior argument and that in fact these guys are part of the same group of friends, who hang together.”
Patrick Jones
“So just a misunderstanding deteriorated that badly?”
G. Michael Reid
“Obviously. Obviously just something that went wrong among friends.”
But that falling out of friends was not the weekend’s only tragedy. Five hours earlier seventeen-year-old Shawn Clother was gunned down at a friend’s house. His grieving mother says it was not the kind of phone call she was expecting.
Ava Young, Mother of the Deceased
I got the call about five minutes to seven, saying that my son was just shot around the lane from our house.”
Patrick Jones
“When you went there, what did you find?”
Ava Young
“A sight I would never wish on my worse enemy. I saw my son in a crouched position dead from a gunshot wound. He was a pleasant person, he is always there, willing and able. A few months ago he started hanging out with the wrong people I must say. Wasn’t approved of the people he was hanging out with, but I couldn’t stop him. I talked to him, but I couldn’t choose his friends.”
While the families of the murdered young men are left questioning the circumstances surrounding their deaths, the police say that as difficult as it may seem, the public should continue their lives as normal.
G. Michael Reid
“We would advise people to just be cautions, but go ahead living your lives. We cannot allow the criminals to just take control of our city like that and place us under a state of siege. We don’t think that these incidents were anything that will spur any kind of retribution as such. These were incidents that wasn’t… it didn’t cross any lines as such, it was just amongst, in particular the murder with the guys and his girlfriend then the other ones, where we believe just within same groups of people.”
For his part, Commissioner of Police, Jose Carmen Zetina, calls the weekend murder spree simply, crimes of opportunity.
Jose Carmen Zetina, Commissioner of Police
“I don’t think it’s deteriorating to that extent that it should cause any alarm to the public. The things that happened over the weekend is just, I would consider it as crimes of opportunity, where they had three incidents where the manhunt of death totalled to four.”
While the nation continues to come under increasingly violent pressure from criminal elements, the police are struggling to keep pace. Reid says the weekend’s bloodshed must be put in its proper perspective.
G. Michael Reid
“Whenever one person dies from gunshot its cause for concern. The department certainly is concerned. It seems however that when it rains it pours and just this one Friday night it was just madness. The police have done everything possible to try and ensure that the rest of the September celebration goes well. Hopefully, this is just a spate that will not last for too long. Everything is being put in place to try and prevent any further occurrence. These were just individual incidents and we don’t see a connection with any larger picture here.”<
Jose Carmen Zetina
“Well these are isolated cases. For example the case of the ex-prison officer Jenkins shooting at his ex-common-law wife, is a matter of jealously that happened at a bar at the time. One person that was talking to the woman got shot because the person, the culprit, got enraged and as well he shot the woman, killed her spontaneously and he shot himself, and he died the next day. The other incidents involving–I would term one of them with Clother–it’s a matter of criminal enterprise that has gone sour. You could look at it as vengeance being taken. That matter has already been solved, we know who are the culprits. The third one, again it’s a crime of opportunity, and again, the criminal enterprise that had gone sour with Mark Saragosa being killed.”
Patrick Jones, for News 5.
According to our unofficial count, a total of forty-seven murders have been committed since January first.
