Woman shot dead while she watches TV
Just when you think you’ve exhausted all the different ways to chronicle a tragic death, along comes another senseless murder that forces us to describe that which defies rational description. The latest outrage occurred Sunday night just after nine in Belize City. The precise location is a house on the ironically named… Freedom Street. Jacqueline Woods reports.
Jacqueline Woods, Reporting
Twenty-one year old Elizabeth Williams was sitting next to her grandmother on the armrest of this sofa, when a person walked up the steps and fired three shots through the glass louvers into the living room. Alicia Miralda, says the family was watching television when they suddenly heard shots and everyone tried to run for cover.
Alicia Miralda, Sister
“I run in my mother’s room and I noh know weh (where) my granny and my aunt and my sister get to. So I hollered fi my pa and I ah deh di (him they are) shoot in the house. When I look, I see my sister come up to me enna (full of) blood, she holding her chest and she dropped down in front of me. So I start to holler fi my ma out of the bathroom, tell ah that my sister get shot. So when my ma come out ah the bathroom, some bwai come help we and back her out right.”
Williams was shot twice. One bullet entered the side of her back and exited through the chest, while the other slug struck her in the abdomen.
Alicia Miralda
“We called the ambulance and they noh reach yet from then. I tek and I ker her dah (took her to the) hospital, me and my two friends. And we try talk to her all the way, she was conscious and she tell me that her head di hurt, her heart di hurt, and I tell her, just stay with we because we love ah and thing. Anyway, she continue to talk, she ask God fi please help ah (her), and I tell ah just stay, no worry bout nothing, she wah okay. We ker her in and immediately start to tend to her, they called in the doctors, I was very happy and glad fi that. They start to take care of her. She mi conscious still yet, up to in the operating room, she mi conscious until we hear that her liver get…everything gone, inside of her mi bust up. She lose lot of blood, she get pale, pale, and she couldn’t mek it. But I mi know she mi strong. She dah (is) the strongest one out ah five a we.”
Williams died around 10:00 that night at the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital. As the family copes with the inexplicable loss of a loved one, they also face a host of unanswered questions.
Alicia Miralda
“We neva hear nothing. I mi di eat and I di watch the TV. The person sneaked up and she mi deh right by the window, so she happen to get two of the shots. One just graze me by my hand and gone into the wall into my mother’s bedroom.”
It appears that the shooting was intentional, and not an act of random gunfire. But who was the intended target? Miralda says they did not hear the sound of footsteps, only the deafening sound of gunshots. And who would want to kill Williams or anyone else in the family? Miralda says all she knows is that her sister was a friendly person, who loved life.
Alicia Miralda
“We noh want point fingers pan nobody directly, because we noh know. All we know, is that the person run down the steps and jump the fence. He had on a cap over his head and we can’t identify ah, nobody can’t identify the person. It really sad that this happened to my sister cause we noh give no trouble round this area. We laugh and talk with everybody, we noh give no trouble.”
Williams is a 1999 graduate of S.J.C. Extension, and up to the time of her murder, was an exemplary employee of Williamson Industries. Reporting for News 5, Jacqueline Woods.
Police say the bullet that killed Williams was a nine millimetre. As to the motive for the killing, authorities are questioning one man and looking for another who may help solve what–for the moment at least–remains a mystery.
