Gas station murderer gets life
It was a bloody murder done execution style in broad daylight at a gas station in downtown Belize City, just a few yards away from a primary school packed with children. Today, one year after the shooting death of Urbano Allen the trigger man is finally brought to justice.
A somewhat haggard looking Juan Ramirez walked up the steps of the Supreme Court under heavy police guard. The eighteen year old prisoner was brought down from Hattieville Prison where he has been behind bars since last year for the brutal shooting and murder of Urbano Allen that occurred on the morning of June twenty-six, 1997. On that day Ramirez jumped out of a vehicle, ran up to the glass door of the A & R Gas Station on North Front Street and shot Allen seven times in the chest and back.
Investigations revealed that Ramirez was paid five thousand dollars by Emiliano Rivero to kill Allen, after Allen reportedly sold drugs for Rivero and failed to give him the money collected – a total of three hundred thousand dollars. According to Ramirez’s Defense Attorney, Simeon Sampson, as it turned out, it was a job his client was only too happy to take on. Ramirez, when picked up by police, confessed to them that Allen had shot and killed his father in Guatemala.
Simeon Sampson, Defense Attorney
“That is in his confession statement. “Allen had killed my father in my presence, in Guatemala and robbed my father of his cocaine. So when I was offered the job to do in Allen, I was so happy to do it.””
Q: “So it was more a case of revenge then?”
Simeon Sampson
“”I was broke and I…” That was in his statement.”
In his address, the presiding Judge, Justice George Meerabux said he has been disturbed by the facts of the case and the cold-blooded way the murder was planned and carried out. While the nature of the crime would have given Ramirez the death Penalty, Meerabux explained that because the accused was only seventeen years old at the time of the murder, he could have only handed down a life sentence. A judgement that Sampson says he expected, although he would have preferred if the judge had imposed a more fixed sentence, preferably a twelve year jail term.
Simeon Sampson
“As far as I am concerned, justice has been done. My function is to ensure that any protection of law to which a citizen is justifiably beneficiary; my professional obligation is to defend him and represent him and invoke every avenue, every angle of law that I can invoke in his favor subject to the judge’s discretion to over rule my submission. I have done my best for him.”
It is likely, however, that Ramirez will not end up spending the rest of his life behind bars. The new parole system, which was recently instituted, allows prisoners including those with life sentences to first serve half their jail time before they are eligible for parole.
While Ramirez now goes back to Hattieville Prison, his co-conspirator, Roberto Lozano, whose murder charge was withdrawn against him yesterday for lack of evidence, is now facing a charge of harboring. The prosecution seems to be satisfied that Lozano, who drove the getaway boat knew or had reasonable cause to believe that when he took Ramirez across the river, he knew the young man was going to murder someone. With that knowledge he still continued to hide Ramirez and shelter him from law enforcement. As for Emiliano Rivero, who is believed to have paid Ramirez to do the job, all charges of aiding and abetting were dropped due to lack of supporting evidence. The case was prosecuted by D.P.P. Adolph Lucas.
