P.M.’s son was with beating victim at bar

Reverberations from the beating death of a fourteen-year-old boy by British soldiers are being felt even stronger tonight as a joint investigation of the incident gathers steam. Thirty soldiers remain confined to their barracks at Ladyville as a team of five military police investigators and their Belizean counterparts try to unravel exactly what took place Thursday night that caused David Zabaneh Jr. to fall into a coma and die two days later in a Tampa hospital. While police and MPs try to sweat truthful testimony from the soldiers–all members of a tightly knit company of Gurhkas–they will also depend on eye witness accounts from the three young men who accompanied Zabaneh to Raul’s Rose Garden at mile eight on the Northern Highway. Those witnesses, all students at St. John’s College, have not been publicly named by the news media, but after checking with police and double checking with NOPCA, the National Organisation for the Prevention of Child Abuse, we can find no legal or ethical bar to the identification of three people, whose testimony will be crucial in any criminal case that may arise. And those names are not exactly unknown. Said Musa Jr., better known as Sado, is of course the son of the Prime Minister. Eugene Zabaneh Jr., cousin of the deceased David Zabaneh Jr., is the son of prominent Stann Creek citrus magnate, Eugene Zabaneh. The third boy present that night, also an SJC student, is Ryan Edwards. Edwards, originally from San Pedro, lives in Belize City with his mother, Alma Staines Gabourel and her husband, Dr. Erwin Gabourel. A British Army press officer arrived in the country today and it is believed that he and police press officer G. Michael Reid will hold a joint briefing shortly to update the news media on any new developments in the case.