Accused killer acquitted of charges

Gion Staine

The accused gunman in a double murder was freed today due to inadmissible evidence. A Valentine’s Day ambush on Gill Street in 2008 left two men dead and one injured. Days later, police charged a sixteen year old minor for the murders of nineteen year old Eugene Flores and eighteen year old Roberto as well as the Attempted Murder of twenty-four year old Ron Thomas, who survived the shooting. The accused killer, Gion Staine, is now nineteen years old and today he was acquitted of all charges. During a voir dire held to determine whether Staine’s caution statement would be allowed into evidence, Sergeant Nicholas Palomo took the stand. He confessed that after the shooting, he found a bullet at Staine’s house but never reported it. It was also revealed in court that Palomo promised Staine that he would not be charged if he gave a statement. Justice Herbert Lord ruled that the statement would not be admitted into evidence, because he had doubts as to whether the statement was given voluntarily. Thomas also testified during the trial that he was Torres and Flores at around five p.m. on February fourteenth, 2008, when a barrage of bullets were fired at them but he was unable to identify the shooter. Judge Lord then directed the jury to find Staine not guilty on all charges.

Another accused killer was in court this morning. Nineteen year old Triston Gordon was arraigned for the Murder of Kenyon Plunkett, a Belize City mechanic who was killed execution style. Gordon has been remanded to prison until his next court appearance on June twenty-seventh. Plunkett was shot once behind his head on April twenty-eighth while he rode a bicycle through an alley off Lakeview Street. He was targeted by a lone gunman less than fifteen feet away from his workplace.