Maya Mopan Man Shot; He Believes He is Being Targeted
But there is another incident in Belmopan that landed a resident in the hospital. Clement Mangar of Maya Mopan in Belmopan is lucky to be alive tonight. The fifty-five-year-old man was targeted by a gunman at around nine o’clock on Monday night while he made his way home on Tul Street. Mangar was shot twice and is at the Western Regional Hospital receiving treatment. He says he saw the shooter and suspects why he was targeted. News Five’s Hipolito Novelo reports.
Hipolito Novelo Reporting
Fifty-five-year-old Clement Mangar remains in a stable condition at the Western Regional Hospital. He is suffering from two gunshot wounds he received on Monday night. Mangar was on his way home in the Maya Mopan community of Belmopan when he heard someone call out for him. When he turned around, a gunman pointed a firearm at him, blasting several shots in his direction.
Clement Mangar
Clement Mangar, Shooting Victim
“I was at my daughter’s house which was like six houses from my home. I left her home like eighty-thirty. On the way going home I met up to a guy who I know as Bejerano and he had a black shirt on. He was sitting on a bicycle. He looked at me and said ‘Mangar weh d goan?’ When he said ‘Mangar weh d goan?’ all I looked, I saw he pointed at me and fired two shots. I saw fire out of the barrel of a gun and then I realize that he was shooting me.”
Neighbors say they heard three gunshots. Mangar was shot in the chest and lower abdomen. The gunman, he believes, was waiting for him.
Clement Mangar
“The bullet managed to catch me on the right side of my chest and on the lower part of my abdomen. Right beside my side, below my ribcage, a shot went in. One went in on the muscle of my breast. Well the doctors say that the two bullets went across my abdomen and damaged by the diaphragm and the other bullet hit my liver so it is a critical situation.”
Hipolito Novelo
“Did you lose a lot of blood?”
Clement Mangar
“I lost all my blood. They gave me back two pints of it already and they will give me two pints some other day maybe tomorrow or this evening. I ran off. So I am running, he was running from me. He did not continue to run to shoot me. He started to run away but I know him. I know him. He is our neighbors. I went to my house. I ran for six hundred yards. When I ran to my neighbors’ house I asked them to call the police. I was shouting all along the way. That is why Bejarano got frightened. I know he very well, he is our neighbors.”
Mangar, a marshall for the P.U.P., says the attempt on his life is linked to the recent case involving Nicolasa Cus- a mother in the same community whose house was dismantled after she was served several times with a notice of eviction by RECONDEV. Mangar fought for Cus to stay on the piece of land which RECONDEV says she is illegally occupying. Mangar is not accusing RECONDEV but a relative of the shooter he says was involved in the dismantling.
Clement Mangar
“I am the one who was there to help her and put a tent for her myself and some colleagues from the P.U.P. I lay some five hundred blocks on the foundation she had just to safeguard and protest her household items. I want to the whole world to know that someone paid that young man to do this to me.”
That young man, Mangar says, might still be out there, waiting for a second opportunity.
Hipolito Novelo
“Do you fear that he might try a second attempt on your life?”
Clement Mangar
“Well, I think so. I don’t fear him anyway buddy. I fear God because he is a coward. He shoots and runs away.”
Hipolito Novelo, News Five.
