Two police officers under investigation
We begin tonight’s newscast with a report of a Police Internal Affairs Unit investigation of two police officers assigned to the Ladyville Police Station for the beating of two of their own. The allegations of assault came from two officers from the Queen Street Police Detachment. The drama reportedly unfolded around six last Friday evening at the Ladyville Police Station over a television stolen from the home of Lyndon Gillett in September. Our sources say that the television ended up at a pawn shop in Belize City and that the owner, Russian national, Alex Kotlyorenco, was called in by an investigating officer from the Ladyville Police station. But Kotlyorenco refused to cooperate and police detained him pending charges of Handling Stolen Goods. Kotlyorenco contacted his employee, Belize City detective, Shaun Faber, who turned in the stolen television at the Ladyville Police Station. And that is where things got out of hand and where the internal affairs investigation begins.
Faber is alleging that Corporal Emilio Pott and Sergeant Solomon Marin, who were at the Ladyville Police Station and who appeared to be under the influence of alcohol, handcuffed him and beat him up. He claimed that somehow he managed to escape and caught up with another Belize City detective, Jeremy Moore, who relieved him of the handcuffs. But the two officers from the Ladyville Police Station apprehended both of them and administered a beating on them. Four hours and a few phone calls later, Officer Commanding the Ladyville Police Formation, Superintendent Calbert Flowers, stepped in and defused the situation. While Moore and Faber are crying foul, Sergeant Marin of the Ladyville detachment is saying that it was Moore and Faber who assaulted him first. In a conversation with News Five this evening Faber told us he was consulting with an attorney and was contemplating filing law suits against Marin and Pott.
In related news, five persons appeared in the Magistrates’ Court yesterday and were charged with the burglary of Gillett’s home located at Mile twelve and a half on the Northern Highway. Of the five, three were remanded to prison: twenty-three year old Leon Yorke, twenty-six year old Earl Miranda, and twenty-five year old Anthony Sabido. Yorke and Miranda were charged with Burglary and Handling Stolen Goods while Sabido was charged only with Handling Stolen Goods. The two other accomplices were Andrew Bennett and Lawrence Simpson who were also charged with Handling Stolen Goods but they were fined one thousand five hundred dollars and are to make the payment of their fines by November six or serve a term of two years imprisonment. Police investigations led them to the homes of the five accused persons where they recovered a mixer and two television sets that were stolen from Gillett’s residence. Yorke, Miranda and Sabido are to reappear in court on October fourteenth.
