Woman farmer killed in Cayo as rural crime wave escalates

A crime wave that seems to be sweeping the once peaceful rural areas of Belize has now engulfed the Cayo District. On Thursday evening police discovered the decomposing body of forty-four year old Rosanne Orizzi at her farm in upper Barton Creek. Orizzi, a U.S. born naturalized Belizean citizen, has lived on her own in the largely Mennonite area near the Mountain Pine Ridge for over ten years. On Wednesday when she failed to show up for her Bible study class in San Ignacio her friends alerted police. When they arrived on the farm Thursday morning they found Orizzi’s unclothed body lying behind the foul coup about a hundred yards from her house. Reports are that her head had been severely injured. Police believe that she had been murdered several days earlier. An on-site postmortem was due to be conducted this afternoon and an official release indicates that police have launched an intensive investigation.