Chinese shops hit hard over holidays
A Belizean just released from jail after serving a ten-year prison term
is on the run after he went on a shooting rampage on Boxing Day targeting
Chinese businesses. Guan She Qing clings to life at the KHMH after he
was shot in the back at close range. He was selling in his shop at the
corner of Mex Avenue and West Collet Canal around 7:30 on the evening
of December twenty-sixth, when he said a dark-complexioned man came to
the shop window and ordered a Guinness Stout, what happened next will
surprise you.
Voice of Guan She Qing, Wounded Businessman
?I opened and put the Guinness on the table. He threw a
five-dollar and a one hundred dollar on the table. Then I looked to take
the five-dollar to change it for him and he cussed me. He said ?Asshole.
You want the money don?t you?? The he hauled out a gun and shot me like
that, the bullet went through and through me.?
Ann-Marie Williams
?He shot you in the back??
Guan She Qing
?He shot me in the back and the bullet went through and through.
Then the neighbour heard and took me to the hospital to take an
operation. I stayed in the hospital and rested, the doctor tended to me.
Something happened like that, no quarrel, no nothing.?
?Before that, I didn?t quarrel. I?m a nice guy in Belize, a never
give anybody and trouble and I help a lot of Belizean people.?
Qing says the ambulance and police came an hour later and had it
not been for a kind neighbour he would have died waiting for the
authorities to assist him.
Police say the same ex-convict also shot a Chinese couple right
around the corner. Around 8:30, the suspect, believed to be named Smith,
ordered a Guinness from Zheng Yu Fung’s shop on West Canal. He asked the
forty-three year old businesswoman if she had change for a hundred
dollar bill, but he refused to hand over the blue note. Fung called her
husband Xing Xing Lin for assistance, but before he could settle the
matter, the assailant shot him. The first bullet missed but the second
caught Lin in the shoulder. The assailant also stole Lin’s licensed
nine-millimetre Beretta pistol.
Earlier the same day on the north side of town, on Third Street in
the King’s Park Area, a similar scenario unfolded, but in this case no
shots were fired. Police say around 3:55 p.m. a dark-complexioned man
ordered fifty cents worth of cigarettes and after being served pulled a
handgun and demanded money from businesswoman Hei Quo Wong. The
assailant then saw what he wanted, reached over the counter and stole
nine hundred dollars cash.
