Five hospitalised in weekend shootings, stabbing
There may have not been a murder, but Belize City had its share of crime this weekend as several shootings and a stabbing have left five persons hospitalised. The first victim was fifteen year old Shaquille Billary of Banak Street. According to Billary, around seven on Friday night she was on Logwood Street when an argument ensued between her and a man she knows only as Conrad. But words turned to violence when Billary said Conrad took out a sharp object and stabbed her. Billary was taken to the K.H.M.H. suffering from wounds to both her arms and her back. She remains hospitalised in stable condition and police are looking for Conrad.
An hour and a half later, police were called out to mile two and a half on the Northern Highway where they found twenty-one year old shopkeeper Boyi Xy bleeding from the leg. Boyi told police that he was in his store, Highway Grocery, when two men entered and held him up at gunpoint. The businessman handed over an undisclosed sum of money, but before leaving the premises the robbers loosed a shot that caught Boyi in his left leg. He was transported to the K.H.M.H. where he remains tonight in stable condition.
But that was not the end of Boyi’s trouble as that same night, some enterprising thieves tried to capitalise on his hospitalisation. Around eleven o’clock, police received reports of a burglary in progress at the store. When they arrived on the scene the cops discovered two men, steel cutters in hand, breaking into the establishment. In fact, the men had already cut and removed the chain from the back door. Police quickly apprehended the duo and have since charged seventeen year old Anthony Dawson and sixteen year old Jonathan Torres with Attempted Burglary. They are also pursuing the possibility that the teens were the same culprits who shot Boyi earlier that night.
Victim number three was fifteen year old Anthony Roches. The teen told police that he was riding his bicycle on Aloe Vera Street just before midnight on Saturday, when two masked men came from behind and fired several shots at him. One of the bullets found its mark in Roches’ upper back, but according to the teen, he has no idea who shot him or why.
An allegedly accidental shooting landed a young wife in the hospital … on Mother’s Day no less. According to Police Constable Mark Young, around eight Sunday morning he was cleaning his police issued nine millimetre pistol when the firearm discharged. The bullet caught twenty-six year old Rasheeda Young in her left leg, but exited and also wounded her right leg. The woman was treated and released from the K.H.M.H. Police are investigating the incident and are questioning her husband who is attached to Belize City C.I.B. The shooting occurred at the couple’s home on Kelly Street.
Another robbery turned shooting has left an athlete with a gunshot wound to the shoulder. Police reports are that around eight Sunday night twenty year old Ian Gaynair, twenty-seven year old Elroy Rowley, and eleven year old Brian White were on Wood Street when two men held them up at gunpoint. Gaynair handed over his cell phone and two hundred dollars in cash, but when Rowley refused the robbers’ demand one of the pair fired a shot which caught Gaynair in his right shoulder. Police are looking for the two assailants, one of whom is said of have dreadlocks. Both Gaynair and Rowley are footballers with F.C. Belize.
