Police fire shot outside Magistrate’s House

A shooting incident in King’s Park on Friday night has residents on edge and police community relations tense. Police reports are that between seven and eight that night, a unit posted at the residence of Chief Magistrate Herbert Lord, located on St. Thomas Street, spotted two men on bicycles in the vicinity of the house. The riders left the area, but within minutes they were back. Police Press Officer G. Mike Reid says the officers, standing in an obscure location, decided to fire a warning shot in the air as a precaution. The men got the message and left the area for good. No one has been detained. At this point, police say they are not treating the incident as a possible direct attack on Chief Magistrate Lord. Almost exactly a week earlier, on August twenty-third, three men in a darkly tinted car drove up to the Lord home and fired several shots at the Chief Magistrate as he stood on his veranda. Police have since arrested and charged three men with the crime: twenty-two year old Stephen James, thirty-year-old Jerome Goff and twenty-two year old Kareem Bowen, all of Belize City. Officials at the office of the Director of Public Prosecutions tell News 5 that this second incident will not impact their case against James, Goff and Bowen.