B.D.F. Officer Commits Suicide inside Prison Cell

Damacio Coc

For the second time in just over a month, a Belize Defense Force soldier has taken his own life. В.D.F. Сaptain, thirty-three-year-old Damacio Coc, who was remanded pending trial, was found hanging from a bed sheet inside his cell in the Tango Ten section of the prison facility on Sunday morning. Coc was awaiting trial since August twenty-fifth for violating a restraining order. In the interim, he was hoping to make a bail application until his case was called. However, something happened on Sunday and Coc decided that he could not carry on. Today, C.E.O. of the Kolbe Foundation, Virgilio Murillo told News Five what made prison guards suspicious that something was amiss inside the cell that Coc occupied alone.

Virgilio Murillo

Virgilio Murillo, C.E.O., Kolbe Foundation

“Unfortunately, yes we had an officer committing suicide by hanging himself in his cell with a sheet. This was discovered I think around ten-thirty that morning. This was found out after he had had two previous visits by officers as part of the routine, patrols and checks that are done on inmates as part of prison procedures and policies. It was during the ten-thirty check that the guards noticed that he had a white sheet covering his wicket, preventing the guards from seeing inside his cell. A guard would not ignore things like that. It is against the prison rules for prisoners to close off the view of prison guards into their cells. That’s illegal. That’s against policy or rules. So when the guard saw that he found a way to part the white sheet from the wicket and he took a peek inside the cell and that was when he saw the inmate hanging.”