5 more employees of Yhony Rosado charged for assault on Vitalino Reyes Jr.

Audrey Matura-Shepherd

On Wednesday, Belize City police arrested and detained a group of tour guides employed by businessman Yhony Rosado, in connection with a violent assault which landed twenty-three-year-old Vitalino Reyes Jr. in a coma at the KHMH a week ago.  The rounding up of the five men succeeded the arraignment of co-worker Leon Gentle on Tuesday.  Despite Rosado’s denial that his workman was never in the vicinity of Long Island Bar on the evening of the altercation, he was charged with two counts of dangerous harm and use of deadly means of harm.  This evening, the men, who were collared outside of the Fort Street Tourism Village after discharging their guests, were each charged with two counts of dangerous harm and use of deadly means of harm.  During the attack Reyes Jr. and his colleague Yoney Vega were reportedly hit over their heads with beer bottles.  While it is being argued that both men were conscious when police escorted them from the establishment, Vitalino was transported to the hospital in a state of unconsciousness.  He remained comatose for several days before coming to.  This afternoon, attorney Audrey Matura-Shepherd gave an update on the detention of her clients.

Audrey Matura-Shepherd, Attorney for Cave-tubing.com

“My five clients, all employees of Yhony Rosado will be arraigned shortly and we are told that they are going to be arraigned for dangerous harm and use of deadly means of harm and it’s just an arraignment.  We’ll have to take the matter to court and it has to be challenged at that level.  Like I explained to my clients, unfortunately the police can pull you in, you don’t know in advance what evidence they have against you, you have to go through the process even if you are exonerated and those guys are saying that yes they were at that bar but they never even touched that person.  The second thing with that however, is that I really have an issue with how police dealt with that case because yesterday I sat with Sergeant Milan who is responsible for this case and he had asked if my clients would do an ID parade and I explained to them no and why because police had already made up their minds and had already said and done prejudicial things that would not have served their interest.  Despite that, they dragged them out into an ID parade and we say from now, we want it on the record that an ID parade was very unfair and unjust.  Of course it is not until we go to court that these persons will be able to exonerate themselves.  The sad thing is that police will go at lengths to get evidence.  Then of course they’ll say that the D.P.P. directed but the D.P.P. can only go with what’s on paper on the face of what they have.  She won’t go and investigate behind the scenes what happened.  And so they put you through the torment of everything just that when you go to court you can prove that these things were illegally obtained or improperly done or there wasn’t sufficient [evidence] but we have to wait until then.  In the mean time those guys pent forty-eight hours in lockup and now we’re going to get bail for them and we’ll just have to let the process take its course.”

Bail was offered in the sum of seven thousand dollars each, plus one surety of the same amount.