A Teenager is Kidnapped and Tortured; Video is Live-streamed on Facebook

A jarring video of extreme pain being inflicted on a male minor began making its rounds on social media on Saturday morning.  The individual, who is seen torturing the teenager, is someone well-known to police.  The clip shows an individual lying on the floor, being kicked and struck repeatedly with a broomstick, before a kitchen knife is introduced to sever a finger.  It is disturbing, so much so that even Police Commissioner Chester Williams spoke on the degradation of the Belizean society.

Chester Williams

Chester Williams, Commissioner of Police

“As I saw the video, I wondered what is wrong.  Oliver Sutherland, as you would know, is no stranger to the law.  He’s someone the police have dealt with on numerous occasions in the past.  He has gone under the radar for quite some time and I listened to the… or what he was saying when he went live [that] this minor had gone to his home with a gun to kill him.  Well our investigation so far revealed that that is not so, the minor had no gun and the minor did not go to his house to kill him.  As a matter of fact, he had sent out the minor to go and buy for him some beers and when the minor came back, he was not at home.  The minor later returned to the area to give him what he had purchased for him and that was when the minor was pulled inside and whatever happened, happened.  It is very, very sad to see that a child of that age had to be put through that and what he said that the minor came from Cayo; that minor has lived right in that area for the past four months.”

This evening, Oliver Sutherland appeared in the lower court where he was charged for being a member of a gang.