2 Youths Acquitted of 2015 Cayo Murder

Two young men from the villages of Roaring Creek and Camalote were told on Monday in Supreme Court that they no longer had a case to answer on charges of murder. Twenty-one-year-old Damion Donovan Velasquez and twenty-year-old Justin Giovanni Banner were accused of killing teenager, sixteen-year-old Ivan Choc during a home invasion in Camalote Village in November of 2015 while he was having dinner with his family. Attorneys Oscar Selgado and Leeroy Banner submitted that the men had no case to answer because it was not proven beyond a reasonable doubt that their clients, Banner and Velasquez, committed the murder. Ivan’s parents testified and according to father Eluterio Choc, he identified whom he thought was responsible to police, though not by name. But he noted that the men wore masks and could not be identified otherwise. Supreme Court Justice Antoinette Moore decided that it did not fit the standard and so upheld the no-case submission and set the men free. The Crown was represented by Senior Crown Counsel Cecil Ramirez.