P.M. says injured Guatemalan was shot in Belize

Dean Barrow

A Guatemalan national was shot by the Belize Defense Force last Tuesday in the Chiquibul and remains hospital under guard at the Western Regional Hospital. Prime Minister Barrow explained today that all investigations have revealed that twenty-seven year old Edgar Alexander Sacasa of Picalito Village was indeed inside Belizean territory when he was shot to the abdomen. Barrow says that the fallout from the incident has been minimal.

Prime Minister Dean Barrow

“He was encountered two kilometers east of the Belize/Guatemala border, so he was well within Belizean territory. After Mister Alveno had fired on the B.D.F. patrol, they returned fire and Mister Alveno was shot. Members of the patrol disarmed him, searched; they found two cell phones, one twenty-two rifle and eleven live rounds of ammunition. The B.D.F. medics…he was shot—I think he received like three wounds. And I correct colonel? Four… The B.D.F. medics, who obviously are outstanding, attended to him, tried to bind up his wounds. It took a while, given where they were, to walk and carry him to a point where the ambulance was waiting to take him to a hospital. How long did that extraction process last colonel? About twelve hours. But the medics did such a good job that he was taken to the hospital, surgery was done on him and he is in a critical but stable position apparently recovering with each passing day. A joint verification team including officials from Guatemala, the O.A.S. and the government of Belize, visited the area and confirmed that the incident occurred well within Belize. The foreign minister, or rather the C.E.O. who accompanied the minister to the O.A.S. meeting in Guatemala, had a discussion with I believe the deputy foreign minister in Guatemala. As I recollect the foreign minister did not even raise the matter with our foreign minister. So presumably the fallout from this incident is going to be minimal especially if the man makes a complete recovery.”

It is expected that Sacasa will make a complete recovery. But earlier this week, a press report said that the Guatemalan government will be deploying the elite Kaibiles along the adjacency zone as a result of Sacasa’s shooting.