Four Belizeans missing in N.Y., one at Pentagon
The massive terrorist attack on the United States of America continues to be felt here in Belize. According to Ambassador Stuart Leslie, chief of Belize’s mission to the United Nations, five Belizeans remain missing in the wake of the disaster: four in Manhattan and one in Washington, D.C. The missing person in Washington is Philip Martinez, an employee of the U.S. military, who works at the Pentagon. We have no more information about Martinez, but he is said to be one of several Belizeans employed at that massive facility, which was hit by a commercial airliner on Tuesday morning. Among the other four described by Leslie as still missing in Manhattan is Alva Jeffries. Jeffries, who was described in yesterday’s newscast as working on the ninety-sixth floor of the first World Trade Center tower hit by a plane, has still not been accounted for. According to reports from her cousin, former TV personality, Jacqueline Gray, they have visited all the key hospitals in Manhattan, Staten Island and New Jersey, but have not found Jeffries listed as a patient. They are still hopeful, however, that she may be among the many hospital patients not yet identified. The names of the other three New York Belizeans still missing have not been released by the mission, but we can report that Pat Saldano, listed as missing on yesterday’s newscast, has been reported safe and sound in Brooklyn.
One problem hampering the gathering of information by Belize’s diplomats in the United States is that today both the mission in New York and the embassy in Washington were closed. The consular section in Manhattan had been shut down from yesterday because of its close proximity to the Israeli consulate, while the Park Avenue diplomatic office was evacuated at noon today because of a bomb scare at Grand Central Station. In Washington, our embassy was evacuated at 1:40 this afternoon due to bomb threats made against the nearby Islamic Center.
In related news, Ambassador to the United States, Lisa Shoman remains stranded in Peru, where she was attending a conference. Until she can find a flight back to her post, Nestor Mendez functions as the Charge d’Affaires.
