One year later: No closure in boy’s death

Exactly one year ago today, a fourteen-year-old boy lost the battle for his life after a brutal bar brawl left him in a coma. David Zabaneh Jr. had been a student at Saint John’s College at the time and was out with three friends at Raul’s Rose Garden, a bar and brothel on the Northern Highway, in the early morning hours of May eleventh. How exactly the fight started is still being disputed, but when the dust cleared, Zabaneh had been severely beaten by members of a group of approximately thirty Gurkha soldiers of the British Army. The young boy was rushed to the United States for medical treatment but lapsed into a coma and died two days later. An intensive investigation by a joint team of Belizean police and officers of the British Royal Military Police was immediately launched to determine what transpired that night, but to date no findings have been released to the public. Under an agreement with the Belize government, the case is being handled under British military law. This morning, News 5 contacted Colonel David Leigh, commanding officer of BATSUB, the British Army Training Support Unit, who says the inquiry into the matter is ongoing and is expected to conclude in the near future. According to military sources, the extraordinary length of the investigation can be attributed to two factors. One is the language barrier since the Gurkhas speak Nepalese. The other is that the British Army is trying to put together an airtight case to achieve convictions that will deter future incidents of this nature.