Orange Walk teen charged with jail cell murder

A teenager has been charged with murder following the death of a fellow prisoner in the Orange Walk police station. According to authorities, on Saturday afternoon, seventeen year old Eric Castillo and thirty year old Nelson Castellanos were two of six men detained in the station’s communal holding cell, but within hours, the older prisoner would be dead. Reports to our newsroom indicate that Castellanos was–for reasons unexplained–playing in the cell’s slop bucket and splashed faeces on Castillo. The teenager didn’t take kindly to the insult and proceeded to punch Castellanos numerous times in his head and chest. Concerned prisoners alerted the guards, who relocated the victim to another cell and offered to take a statement from him about the beating. The officers claim the injured man assured them he was okay and they left it at that. But when the guards returned to the lock up to check on the prisoners, Castellanos was dead. According to Orange Walk police, a post-mortem has since determined that blood clots caused by injuries to Castellanos’ chest resulted in heart failure. Castillo has since been arrested and charged with murder. Police sources tell News Five that the accused has admitted beating Castellanos, but does not believe his punches caused his death.

Castillo had initially been arrested on Thursday for stealing a chain and was on remand for the weekend pending a court hearing on Monday morning. As for Castellanos, he had originally been picked up for an immigration offence on Thursday, but when he wasn’t charged by the arresting officers within the necessary forty-eight hours, Orange Walk police released him. However, Castellanos was soon back in police custody, accused of trying to break into a home. We understand the deceased is a stranger in Orange Walk and gave investigators a Belize City address at the time of his arrest.