Ex’s Jealous Rage Takes Out Gavin Palmerston in Ladyville
Gavin Palmerston
There were three murders over the weekend, one in Ladyville, another in Belize City and the third occurred this morning in Dangriga. We start tonight’s newscast with the stabbing murder of forty-one-year-old Gavin Palmerston on Friday night. Palmerston was with a lady friend around eighty-thirty when he was fatally stabbed by thirty-seven-year-old Robert Brown, the estranged common-law-husband of Stephanie Coe with whom Palmerston was visiting that night. An altercation escalated into the fatal stabbing of Palmerston on the verandah of an apartment building on Barrier Reef Crescent in Vista Del Mar, Ladyville. After he was stabbed, Palmerston staggered inside the kitchen of the apartment and collapsed. Brown escaped, but would later hand himself over to police that same night. But was the deadly stabbing the result of a love triangle? News Five’s Duane Moody goes looking for answers.
Robert Brown
Duane Moody, Reporting
Robert Brown was arraigned this afternoon in the Belize City Magistrate’s Court for the murder of forty-one-year-old Gavin Palmerston. The thirty-seven-year-old Ladyville resident appeared before Magistrate Michelle Trapp and was remanded into custody until March twenty-eighth when he is to reappear in court. Brown reportedly turned himself into Ladyville police less than an hour after he knifed Palmerston on the verandah to a house in the Vista Del Mar community off the Phillip Goldson Highway.
Alejandro Cowo
ASP Alejandro Cowo, O.C., C.I.B., Belize City
“Mister Robert Brown later on that night handed over himself to police where police interviewed him and as a result of that, police arrested and charged Mister Robert Brown on Sunday morning for the crime of murder.”
Just after nine-thirty on Friday night, police were called out to this apartment on Barrier Reef Crescent; in the kitchen laid the body of Palmerston who had been stabbed four times to the back, following an altercation with Brown. Reports are that Palmerston was visiting with Stephanie Coe, Brown’s ex-common-law-wife, when he unexpectedly appeared. Brown assaulted Coe, a knife was introduced into the fight between both men and Palmerston was fatally stabbed.
ASP Alejandro Cowo
“Sometime after nine p.m., Police were called to 123 Barrier Reef Drive, in the Vista Del Mar area, where they observed the motionless body of a male person, who was later identified as Gavin Palmerston a forty-one-year-old Belizean of Ladyville. Upon inspection of the body, the police was able to observe several stab wounds to the back of the body. What the investigation has shown so far is that Mister Palmerston went to visit a friend there, Stephanie Coe, who was staying at another friend’s house when the ex-common-law for Stephanie arrived and an argument ensued between Mister Palmerston and Mister Brown, who is the ex-common-law husband, and as a result a fight ensued and he resulted in receiving four stab wounds to the back.”
Stephanie Coe
While Brown has been arraigned for murder, his family claims that he acted in self-defense.
ASP Alejandro Cowo
“What the investigation has shown so far is that the gentleman was just having a regular conversation with the female. There is nothing that has proven that there was any provocation for him to be behaving in such a way and therefore doing the fatal stabs to Mister Palmerston.”
Duane Moody for News Five.
