Belize City man gunned down on Newtown Barracks

For the second weekend in a row gunshots echoed through B.T.L. Park on the Newtown Barracks…sending hundreds in panic and leaving a young Belize City man bleeding on the sidewalk. On Saturday night, eyewitnesses watched in horror as a gunman shot his victim point blank in the back. News 5’s Jacqueline Woods reports.

Jacqueline Woods, Reporting

Tonight the family of twenty-year-old Donald McKay Junior believe that the young man with a group of friends at the B.T.L. Park on Saturday night, when he was shot by someone he knew.

Lorna McKay, Donald’s Mother

“He’s the type of person who basically would look out for his friends, he is friendly. When he was younger he was very hyper and a couple of things he got into, but he has changed and I think that is why he probably walked away from trouble, because if he was not a changed person he would have stood up there and fight. He had a big body and he could have fought that person and he would have defended himself. But I think he was basically trying to live up to what we told him to do, walk away from trouble and it cost him his life.”

Jacqueline Woods

“The trouble started following an argument a young man had with McKay. Police say McKay was in the company of his friends here at the B.T.L. Park when two men walked up to them, shortly after there was an exchange of words. However, Lorna McKay told News 5 that one of the men, who knew her son had asked him for a lift home, and it was after her son told him that he had no transport that the disagreement started. McKay says her son then did what the family had always asked him to do, and that is walk away from trouble. And it was while McKay was moving away from the area that he was shot twice, once to the back and then to the head.”

Lorna McKay

“Apparently they were sitting out there. The guy said that they were eating burgers and stuff when the other guy approached them as asked them to take them home…two guys approached them and asked to take them home. And he said, well we can’t go anywhere right now and that sort of thing, we can’t move right now. And he told them I don’t have my mother’s vehicle tonight… So some argument ensued and the guy apparently took out a gun and started to aim it. I think they said it snapped twice, one of the guys apparently tried to stop him and he hit him with the butt. I think that was what he said. The guy, I don’t know what was wrong with him, but he shot my son in his side, that’s when he fell, I don’t know, shot him in his head.”

McKay was rushed to the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital, but died shortly after. Today his mother said she spoke briefly to the suspect at the police station to try and get some answers, but to no avail.

Lorna McKay

“I was coming from C.I.B. because I gone up there to check and I called for him by his name and I said, “why did you shoot my son.” He said, ma’am…and he had slurred speech and that sort of thing and after he didn’t answer much and he seh, “I noh shoot anybody, I noh know weh happened.””

“I just hope that justice will be served, the law will take its course I hope that things will go the way it’s suppose to be.”

Tonight police are still trying to determine the motive of the murder and say they do have two suspects in custody for McKay’s murder. News 5 understands that at least one of the detainees will be charged for the crime this week. Meanwhile a post-mortem on the body of Donald McKay Junior is scheduled for Tuesday morning. Jacqueline Woods for News 5.

The murder of Donald McKay Junior is number eleven for 2003.