Flimsy charge follows stabbing death of Salvapan resident
On Monday we reported on the stabbing death of nineteen year old Efrein Ramirez, who was killed last Friday night not far from his home in the Salvapan area of Belmopan. Ramirez suffered a stab wound to the throat during a brawl between his group and another group from the same area. The incident started on Cemetery Road and ended up on Venezuela Street around the corner where he died. But today cops didn’t have enough evidence to charge anyone for his murder. Instead of a murder charge, police arraigned two of his friends and two more youths from the other group with a flimsy charge of Engaging in an Unlawful Fight. Those charged are: nineteen year old Margarito Osorio, twenty year old Carlos Montejo, and Ramirez’ two friends, twenty one year old Luis Medina and eighteen year old Nazim Cantun. All pleaded not guilty before Belmopan Magistrate, Hurl Hamilton and were offered bail of eight hundred dollars each. They were ordered to return to court on September twenty ninth.
So another murder will go unsolved & unpunished. All of us who went to school in the 60s & 70s remember the unlawful fights on Friday evenings after school. The only thing hurt were egos. BPD, someone died & others were maimed, scarred for life, how long will it be before the others take revenge & you start picking up more dead bodies?
what the hell?!?!?! i’m tired of hearing the same thing over and over in Belize. people get away with ANY and EVERY Thing in Belize. i’m starting to lose hope
Like I said before, the police are not smart enough to solve murders, and it seem like they are no good at preventing it either.
what else are they good for.
I suspect this won’t end here….these guys will meet again and another life or more will be taken. Police should pick up these so called gang members and charge them for illegal association. They should pick up all that have gang tattoos and charge them. There are many in Belize with MS and 18, crip, bloods tattoos….force them to take them off or lock them up.
I would have to say that these are some of the things which makes it easy to commit crimes in Belize when you know that the penalties will be very light to none at all.
A good rule of thumb in life is to never jump to conclusions without evidence to support a stance. While I understand the sentiment about unsolved & unpunished crime as a current problem in Belize, the reality is that sometimes there ARE actually individuals who are innocent in a situation, though it might seem otherwise in that moment.
Secondly, contrary to popular belief, I wish to point out that news media sometimes don’t always get the story right. …………….. In all your stories on the death of this young man, there was so much that was missed out on, hence lending an undeserved bias against those that were actually the persons that were provoked!
Here is the rest of the story that was missed entirely:
The gentlemen who were held for the stabbing are originally from O/Walk and came to Belmopan to work for a new bakery just opened. For a while now, a group of notorious guys from Salvapan have been harassing these O/Walkenos. I have seen this with my own eyes from the verandah of my father-in-laws home on Guatemala Street where these guys often chase the O/Walkenos guys thru the neighborhood when they leave work in the late evening. The Police Dept knows this as well since they have been called out on various occasions over the last few weeks in regard to this. And to their credit, they have rightly used this info to assist in their final determination of the events that happened last Friday night.
Continuing, the stabbing incident did start at the Chinese store on Cemetery Road when the Salvapan residents arrived to harass 2 of the O/walk guys. The guys ran to their rented residence a block away on Venezuela St, with these guys chasing them with machetes. Again, I know this, b/c the house they were renting is also owned by my wife’s family. The Salvapan guys chased them to the residence and all the way INTO the house, where they commenced assaulting the other people in there with fists and machetes! Those persons at the residence included 2 females, one of which was pregnant!! This is when the stabbing occurred IN SELF DEFENSE!
Also, you should know that with a little more digging beneath the surface, you would have discovered that the deceased AND his brother has been implicated in 2 murders in the last 2 years, the last being earlier this year with the brutal stabbing of a Salvapan woman in front of her young child !!!!
To conclude, I really hope you post this comment b/c I consider it grossly unfair to the people involved to have their name & BUSINESS cast in an unfavorable light such as this, due to events that transpired without any provocation on their part, or their employee’s part.
And…the harassment continues even now: If you happened to drive past the bakery on any evening this week, you will have noted a couple of guys hovering around the area with machetes! As well, if you go to the former rented residence of the O/Walkenos on Venezuela Street, you will note the vandalism and damage that was done on the house after these people had abandoned the residence!
As an addendum, I wish to make this final point that I am in no way affiliated with any of the parties involved; neither the bakery owner and his employees, nor the deceased and his family. I am simply a long time resident of Belmopan who does not care to see an injustice committed against innocent individuals in the court of public opinion as well as in the established media, as I have had the personal experience of being burned in this way before.
JUSTICE WILL NOT BE DENIED!!!!!!!!!!!!!
LongtimeBelmopaneze………. THANK YOU FOR THE INSIGHT that you provided. NOW WE KNOW THE REST OF THE STORY.
LongtimeBelmopaneze: If this scenario that you explain here on this site is what really transpired between the deceased and the person who stab him, then he got what he deserved and if so I can see where the police came to their conclusions about what charges should be put forward in court involving all parties in this case.
Wow! This Longtimebelmopanese person is better than the news people. I am proud to know we do have a educated view once in awhile. We need aliance man.
I have a question has anyone heard the other side of the story of the salvapan guys?
i believe that at some point that the O/Walkenos had to do the salvapan guys something for them to attack!
come one you just wake up one morning and decide that you want to kill someone! of course not!
Some good reason the salvapan guys had so to want to attack the O/walk guys!
The only reason they got away with it is because police don’t have evidence what more do they want isn’t it enough with someone admitting that they killed!
At this point the situation is worse i bet anything that they are going to meet one of these day and take revenge and when we hear there is another body for the police to pick UP!
When from the beginning it could have been PREVENTED, and i repeat he didn’t have why to pay for something his brother did!
The police should indeed investigate and act more on the issue of gangs outside of Belize City. It is a fact that many of the Salvadorans in and around Belmopan harbour their countrymen who belong to the Salvatrucha and other nefarious gangs in Central America. These people should be rounded up and deported with their profiles forwarded to the immigration department so that they can never re-enter Belize. We have enough gang problems without foreign ones transplanting themselves.
@ Strawberry Shortcake,
I have seen these guys from Salvapan in action, the only provocation they needed was someone from somewhere else coming to work there. After work the guys from the bakery would step outside and take of their clothes, and as some to these were tattoed, that was taken as an affront. You seem to know a bit of these gangsters, and so should know that they operate on a mistaken belief that the neighborhoods of Salvapan, San Martin, and Maya Mopan are theirs, and to make things worse, they do not always pick on gangsterlooking individuals but even on hardworking men and women decently dressed. The police know who the trouble individuals are, but on the few occasions they make arrests, these guys are given bail by the court, and return to the street to give trouble. But then again, you have not been victim to any of them, thats why you defend them.
Like i said Belmopan was once a peaceful place and still is today compare to anywhere else in the entire country of Belize.
It would piss me off to see them hurting my people, and it would force me to go back home and get rid of those idiots ruining things for the rest of the hardworking Belmopaneese.
The people of Belmopan do not have to wait around for them to become victims of those iditos, get rid of them right now.
Based on the info shared in this forum, it is apparent that a problem is formenting in the garden city. For heavens sake, will the proper authorities allow this quiet and peaceful city to deteriorate the way the south side of Belize is?
Will the Police and Immigration departments sit around and let this gang foolishness take root and become a cancer in our beloved Capitol??
It just make you wonder sometimes what is the thought process of those in authority. What happened to” Nipping it in the bud” fellas? Why you all have to make every solution seem like rocket surgery!!!!
With the entire population of the country at just around three hundred thousand inhabitants, such a high crime rate does not speak well of the authorities’ desire and level of intelligence in addressing this matter. Is common sense not a criteria anymore to be appointed to positions of leadership??