Baby is dead in bizarre assault

This week may have been a short one but there was no shortage of unbelievably senseless slaughter in Belize City. The latest outrage involves what can only be described as fatal idiocy. Two men on Lakeview Street, one of whom was minding a baby, apparently got into some kind of argument. One picked up a stick, the other picked up the baby. Guess which one of the three is now dead. Jacqueline Woods reports.

Jacqueline Woods, Reporting

Claudia Blanco had just left her son, 16-month-old Santos, in the care of the Gonzalez family and went to buy pampers for the baby. But when Blanco returned to the residence she was told that her son was knocked in the head and was at the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital.

Claudia Blanco, Mother

“I went for one hour and a half. When I come back he said my baby is in the hospital.”

“When I went to the hospital my baby is sick bad bad bad. My baby did not look good.”

According to Gesenia Gonzalez, baby Santos was sitting at their vegetable and food stall with one Joseph “Meito’ Witty, a friend of the child’s mother, when a man they know only as “Shylo” came up to them. Gonzales said she did not hear what Witty told the man but saw when “Shylo” picked up a stick with nails from out of the drain and tried to hit Witty with it. Gonzalez says she does not know why Witty then picked up baby Santos and held the child in front of him but that is when the baby was hit.

Gesenia Gonzalez, Witness

“The man get vexed. So the man gone and got a long stick to whop the boy. He whopped him but he missed the boy and the baby, so he whopped again, so the boy hold the baby and then he catch the baby on his forehead.”

“The baby cried and called for his mother and said he wanted his mother. The baby cried and after the baby cried he called for his mother.”

Gonzalez says Santos started bleeding from his nose and mouth and his forehead began to quickly swell. As Santos was rushed to the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital, the baby lost consciousness. Santos Blanco died at 8:45 a.m.

Police report that one of the two men has been detained and they are looking for the other. Both are believed to be immigrants from Honduras.