Three arrested for murder of Belmopan taxi driver

And five days ago the body of eighty-two year old taxi-driver, James Young, was found in the bushes near the Pooks Hill Resort some thirteen miles off the Western Highway in Teakettle Village. Tonight there is progress to report in the investigation of who could have killed the senior citizen of Cohune Walk in the capital. Belmopan police confirm that twenty-six year old Mathew Gentle was charged for Murder while twenty-five year old Leon Gentle has been charged with Failure to Present a Felony. A third person, nineteen year old Transito Ricardo Tzul, who goes by the alias, Ricky Tzul was also charged with Kidnapping and Robbery. All three will be arraigned in the Belmopan Magistrates’ Court on Thursday morning. As to the motive, police told News Five that it appeared that Young’s killers wanted his taxi.

Young or ‘Mister Jimmy’, as he was affectionately known, went missing last Tuesday and his partially decomposed body was discovered by employees of Pooks Hill this past Friday. Young was stabbed multiple times to the chest and neck area and his body was presumably dumped before his assailants made good their escape in his Toyota Camry taxi. While the murder weapon has still not been discovered, the vehicle was found between the borders of Belize and Guatemala at the Western Border.

And in an update to Tuesday’s discovery of another decomposed body near Mount Pleasant on the Western Highway between Miles forty-four and forty, the victim was buried on site today. No one came forward to identify the body of the Hispanic male believed to be between thirty to forty years old. His hands had been cut off and there were wounds to his head. A post mortem examination today revealed that the cause of death was trauma shock due to multiple wounds. A machete believed to have been the murder weapon was found at the scene. Police say the man could have been murdered between the first or second of this month.