Egner Guerrero is Found Dead, His Family is not Happy with the Police

Egner Guerrero

Tonight there is closure that the body of Egner Guerrero has been found, but the Belize Police Department is once again under fire for the manner in which it reportedly handled the missing person’s case.  Guerrero’s family claims that the officers who dealt with the report were lethargic in their response and had they acted promptly on the leads that were being provided, they would have been able to find their father before it was too late.  Knowing that Guerrero was epileptic and also suffered from mental illness, his daughters searched frantically for him between Belize City and Belmopan, with no luck.  News Five’s Isani Cayetano has that story.

Isani Cayetano, Reporting

A family’s desperate search for their loved one has ended in grief, as the lifeless body of fifty-four-year-old Egner Guerrero was discovered this morning, less than a hundred feet from the John Smith Road near Western Paradise.  Guerrero, an epileptic, left home on the morning of November twentieth and wandered off with hardly a trace.  When his daughters found out that he had not arrived at the family house at the corner of Gibnut and Dolphin streets, concerns for his whereabouts were raised because of his medical condition, as well as the fact that he was not wearing a face mask.  The police department was immediately contacted.

 [File: Nov. 24th, 2020] Jamillah Guerrero, Daughter of Missing Person

Jamillah Guerrero

“They said that the procedure is forty-eight hours to search for someone that is missing, however, they called the other precincts because I had told them that probably he doesn’t have on a mask.  So we went about and they called the other stations to see if someone had arrested him for not wearing a mask and they said that they hadn’t heard anything [and] that they hadn’t arrested any Egner Guerrero.”

Jamillah and her sibling then reached out to the media in asking for public assistance locating their father.  On November twenty-fourth, Jamillah Guerrero stopped by our office with a description of the missing patriarch.

 [File: Nov. 24th, 2020] Jamillah Guerrero

“He is sick.  He has on a dark green tee shirt with Coca Cola written on it in white font and he has on a grey cargo pants and black slippers.  He doesn’t have on a mask, his hair is grey, it’s like black and grey.  He has a long beard and he’s a tall, Hispanic man, around 6’3 in height, and he’s not right in his mind.”

In the ensuing days all efforts would be made to locate him, based on reports of perceived sightings.  During that time the Guerrero family also managed to raise money for a reward should the information provided lead to a successful recovery.  It was a glimmer of hope they held on to, knowing that with each passing day, given Egner’s medical condition and mental state, their chances of finding him in good health were quickly fading.

This morning, a grisly discovery was made just outside of Western Paradise.  A body was observed face down in a shallow pond.  The description matched that of Egner Guerrero.

Jasmine Guerrero, Daughter of Missing Person

Jasmine Guerrero

“This was really unexpected.  This was the last thing I planned or expected, that my father had passed away.  We had been trying so hard, all these searches conducted were done by us, by the family.  Police helped in no way, if they had simply done their job and searched in that specific area that people were giving us the leads from, they would have found my dad.”

Jamillah was at the police station attending to another matter when she was informed of the discovery.

Jamillah Guerrero

Jamillah Guerrero, Daughter of Missing Man

“I got a call from the head of CIB, Mr. Cowo, and he said that they had found my dad ten minutes prior to when he had called and he said that he was dead and that we needed to go and identify the body.  So me and my mom went there on a wild goose chase because he had given us the wrong location and then we got in contact with the officer that was there and then, so we got the exact site where he was.  He was near the same bus stop that they had seen him before, over and over again, where I found his shirt.  He was found not even fifty yards away.

They had placed him in a bag and that is where me and my mom went behind the mobile and saw that it was my dad and his body had already began decomposing.  It had a horrid odor and he was already swelling, almost unidentifiable.”

The family maintains that the police department was notified of all leads that they received, including information that Guerrero had been seen in the very same area on previous occasions.

Jamillah Guerrero

“He was in that area, people called, like my sister said.  I called, I told CIB Zuniga, I told Mr. Cowo, we gave them the leads that we received, we contacted them as much as we could.  We tried our endeavor best to go about conducting our searches.  We searched that area and to no avail, they didn’t assist us.  Had the police done their job, we wouldn’t have been in this situation at all.  I blame the police department because they did not do their job.  We went, I had to tell the police to kindly take his picture, to please take down my information because they had said that they weren’t given any instructions at the Eight Miles Police Station, at the Hattie Ville [Police Station], at the Mahogany Heights [Police Station] anywhere that we went about searching for my dad, people told us and they told us that they contacted the police and the police never arrived.”

The Guerrero family is planning to sue the Belize Police Department for what they believe was gross negligence on the part of its officers.

Isani Cayetano reporting for News Five.