Youth Found Murdered in Lord’s Ridge Cemetery

Police have a new murder to solve in Belize City. This morning, investigators were summoned to the Lord’s Ridge Cemetery where they discovered the body of Gabriel Tillett, an eighteen-year-old labourer of the Pitter Street area, near Antelope Street Extension. That is a few blocks away from where the youth’s body was found. Someone passing through the cemetery stumbled upon the body and alerted the police to the scene. The Pitter Street/Antelope Street Extension area has become a hotspot for murders in recent years, and this latest homicide has left investigators retracing Tillett’s last steps in order to crack the case. News Five’s Marion Ali was on the beat today and filed the following report.

Marion Ali, Reporting

The body of eighteen-year-old Gabriel (Cory) Tillett was found this morning in the Lord’s Ridge Cemetery, a few blocks away from where he lived off Pitter Street in the Collet Division.

It is not yet certain whether Tillett was murdered in the cemetery or was merely dumped there, but Scenes of Crime personnel processed the immediate area, looking for clues. Best information at this time is that the body showed blunt force injuries about the head and cut wounds to the feet. The body was clad in only a shirt and boxers, and his pants and cell phone were not found.

The only area resident who lives directly behind where the body was found, would only tell us off-camera that he was awakened when his dogs began to bark incessantly in the wee hours of the morning. He and his family did not get up to see what was causing the ruckus, but he did say that he found it strange that the dogs kept barking for several minutes.

There are a few surveillance cameras perched at different heights on the far end of Pitter Street overlooking that area. Based on the location where the body was found, perhaps this is the only one that may have captured what happened there.

Gabriel Tillett’s family refused to talk to us and police were trying to gather information of his last known whereabouts.

Marion Ali for News Five.