Security guard killed at the Best Western Biltmore Plaza

There was more gun violence over the Valentine weekend. On the north side, at the prominent hotel, the Best Western Biltmore Plaza, even before dawn, a security guard was murdered. Three men descended on the Nigerian officer on duty and within minutes he was dead. This latest homicide has distressed the Nigerian community to the point of bitter emotion. Marion Ali was at the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital’s morgue when they gathered to view their friend’s body.

Timothy Alaynade, Friend of Murder Victim

“If you are shedding blood, innocent blood constantly on the ground, it’s a curse to the nation.”

Marion Ali, Reporting

The display of utter disgust that this Nigerian nurse, Timothy Alaynade, has toward the level of crimes in Belize represents more than just that.  Alaynade, who is a nurse at the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital, says the numbers of deaths and injuries by violent crimes are so astounding that it has become almost a daily routine at his jobsite. And he implores the Prime Minister to do something to curb the violence.

Timothy Alaynade

Timothy Alaynade

“By the grace of God I work in A & E and I have seen a series of innocent blood being shed.  So the government of this nation, of course you have a representative, Dean Barrow, should please go ahead and make a thorough investigation through whatever channel to know the cause of this kind of brutal attitude.”

Kaluru Oloungududu was working the graveyard shift at the Belize Biltmore Plaza Hotel when sometime around two-thirty he was stabbed to death.

Timothy Alaynade

“One of the security guards that worked Sunday told him that it was not as if they came to rob; it was an attack to him directly.  The other people that work on the other fence of the security told him that they saw two or three guys that jumped through the fence.”

The killing has shocked Oloungududu’s friend, Juliana Okereke, who saw him at the opening of a restaurant just hours before he went to work.

Juliana Okereke

Juliana Okereke, Friend of Murder Victim

“He came, I gave him rice and he was telling me that that stuff we call my-my but I didn’t give to him.  I told him I will give you when you are going to take away.  Unfortunately, maybe he didn’t see me when he was going.  Now on the news I got this morning is that he’s dead, so I felt so bad because the little that I know about him, he isn’t any kind of…he is a reasonable man.  And I’m just wondering what would have happened between him and any person that would make them just eliminate his life like that.”

His friends are not the only ones asking that question, as police also do not have any clues as to who wanted Oloungududu dead or why.  The security guard’s Toyota Camry, which he used to run as a taxi during his free hours, was still in the parking lot at his jobsite.  The Nigerian had made Belize his home for the past seven months and was working at the hotel for the past five months.  He is survived by a wife and three children back in Nigeria.  Marion Ali for News Five.

The Manager of the Biltmore Plaza, Alejandro Trejo, declined to comment on the incident.  Similarly, another Nigerian taxi driver was stabbed and killed as he did business about a year ago on Jane Usher Boulevard in Belize City.  The incidents have prompted the Nigerian community to turn to the office of the Nigerian High Commissioner to the region, Peter Oyedele, who resides in Jamaica.