Escapee Shot Dead, Several Others Injured/Detained
Akeem Tillett
It is the largest jailbreak in recent history and one fatality has been confirmed as a result, while several others are injured and recaptured. As many as twenty-eight inmates managed to escape the Belize Central Prison on Monday evening after holding prison guards hostage for more than five hours. We’ll get to those details in a few, but up to news time, we can confirm that Akeem Tillett was shot and killed by law enforcement officers this afternoon on the Coastal Road. That inmate is no stranger to the police and has had a long list of run-ins with law enforcement. Also recaptured during the operations this afternoon is Christopher Bradley. We are told that police and B.D.F. soldiers are still searching for the other escapees, who are considered armed and dangerous. This morning, Commissioner of Police Chester Williams said that he doesn’t foresee the escapees on the run for too long.
Chester Williams
Chester Williams, Commissioner of Police
“I want to assure the general public that the Ministry of National Security is going to do all we can to ensure that every one of these prisoners are captured and returned to prison. From the escapees, twenty five are Belizeans, eleven of whom were either convicted or in remanded for murder and the others are for varying degrees of crime. The other three are of Guatemalan national. So we are hoping that with the assistance from the public and I want to take this opportunity to appeal to the general public if it is that you have any information in relation to the whereabouts of any of these escapees to please call 911 or 922 numbers. It will be great help for us the quicker we can get these individuals off our streets the better it is going to be. I always want to appeal to these escapees that if it is you know where they are it is not too late for them to surrender. I don’t foresee them running from the long arm of the law for too long. And if it is that we have to be continuously pursuing them, upon being caught the fact that they are armed can cause things to go opposite direction and so it your love one is among these escapees please it is not too late to ask them to surrender to the authorities and make life easier for them and for us.”
George Lovell
Ret’d Lt. George Lovell, C.E.O., Ministry of National Security
“We will do all that we can to ensure our citizens remain safe from people like the sort of prisoners who have escaped. We will not stop until we get all these people back behind the bars or we can account for each and every one of them wherever we know them to be.”
