Murder was the case lodged with cops at the end of family fued

It is the only murder reported so far this week, and it happened in Cotton Tree Village, forty-two miles west of Belize City.  The motive has not yet been established but police are leaning strongly toward a family dispute between the victim and an uncle. Family members say the Eleazar Enoch Barrientos was threatened repeatedly on Thursday by his uncle. The details are still unclear as investigators continue following all leads, but News Five’s Marion Ali visited the grief-stricken family.  Here’s her report.

This is the scene where twenty eight year old Eleazar Enoch Barrientos was almost decapitated as he tried to elude his killer here at this creek off the More Tomorrow Road, about a quarter of a mile off the Western Highway in Cotton Tree Village at mile forty two. Barrientos’ pair of slippers and the clothing he removed before going into the creek for his regular evening swim, along with a half a gallon he used as a dipper, and a scrub brush he used to wash his clothes were still where he left them.

A closer look reveals the telltale bloodstains where Barrientos’ attacker accosted him with a machete and inflicted a severe chop wound across the back of the neck.  While police are still investigating the motive of the killing, the victim’s sister, Ilsia Garcia told News Five that before he was murdered, Barrientos had had a bitter dispute with their uncle, who lived in the adjacent yard in the village.

Ilsia Garcia, sister of murder victim

“They start yesterday morning about eight o’clock.”

Marion Ali

An argument?

Ilsia Garcia

ilsia garcia

“Yes and then I gone wash some clothes. I didn’t see when he come follow he to the yard with the machete the first time. I just saw about four o’ clock to four-thirty when he come the next time. He jump the fences, broke the fences and follow my brother all around with a machete and tell him that he’s going to kill him and cut his head.”

Marion Ali

What triggered the argument?

Ilsia Garcia

“Well dehn just start the argument because they seh my brother was at my granny home because he love my granny like as a mother because she take care of him as he was a baby. So my granny is the neighbor. She live over there. So deh seh he gone over there and he was cutting an orange in my uncle’s table and my uncle tell him to get a piece of board so he can’t cut the table. And then my brother tell him that that table is not gold and from then they begin to fight and then my uncle chase him with a machete.”

Garcia says her uncle and her brother always had conflict, but this was the first time that things got out of control.

Ilsia Garcia

“My brother doesn’t like him. My brother mi have like hate him. But I don’t  noh know why.”

Garcia says the family grew concerned when Barrientos did not return home from the creek, which is about ten minutes walk from his house.

Ilsia Garcia

“We notice that my brother noh reach home about seven o’clock. Every evening he used to goh bathe by the creek. And we notice that he nuh come home right. So, my mother begin to worry and so they gone look fu him and they found him dead with no head.”

The Barrientos and Garcia families in Cotton Tree are trying to cope with having two less members around -their brother who was murdered and their uncle who is police custody. For Ilsia Garcia, it will be difficult moving on without the only brother she ever had.

Ilsia Garcia

“We miss him you know. We just want justice you know. Mek deh pay for it. Mek this nuh, mek the guy being around and killing somebody else ,mek the law do something.”

Police have detained the uncle and a cousin of his pending charges.  Marion Ali for News Five.