In its daily news release, the Government gives all credit to the Prime Minister for cutting a deal which it say puts the country in a much better position to be able to service the debt. A press conference by Prime Minister Dean Barrow to provide further details, but Government is already saying savings will […]
Three persons were brutally murdered over the weekend in the Belize District. Deliverymen Albert Wade and Godwin Panting Junior were the first casualties of the weekend’s gun violence. Sometime after one p.m. on Saturday, their mutilated bodies were discovered on a dirt road off mile twelve on the George Price Highway. A pastor and his […]
The bloodshed spilled into the city over the weekend. A construction worker standing in front of a church on Jasmine Street was ambushed by a gunman on Saturday. Marvin Flowers was shot multiple times and tried as he did to flee, he did not get too far and succumbed two hours later. The general area […]
Police in Belmopan have arrested and charged eighteen-year-old Shemar Santos of Teakettle village, Cayo District for the murder of fellow villager, seventeen-year-old Ernesto “Jun” Wiltshire. Official details reveal that Ernesto’s mother reported to police that her son had gone swimming with two male friends in the Belize River around nine-thirty Tuesday morning and did not […]
A woman is in the Intensive Care Unit of the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital after she was shot in Caye Caulker in the early hours of Monday morning. Twenty-eight-year-old Camille Munnings, her common-law husband twenty-nine-year-old Akeem Garcia and thirty-four-year-old Raul McFarlane were on a golf cart on Xocol Street around twelve-twenty-three a.m. when a man […]
Gun violence continued well into this morning. Personnel from the Scenes of Crime Unit were summoned to Electric Avenue shortly before eleven o’clock this morning, following an incident several hours earlier during which an unidentified gunman opened fire on a house. According to officers on the scene of the shooting, the concrete bungalow was targeted […]
We begin with breaking news. Just before news time, the Central Bank of Belize released a statement confirming major and extensive revisions to the Government of Belize’s proposal to restructure the Superbond and extending the expiration date for the Consent Solicitation Offer originally issued on January twelfth. This was followed by a release by the […]
A Teakettle, Cayo District family have had to come to sudden grips with the death of a loved one, found fatally chopped in some bushes behind the village early this afternoon. As we come on the air, they are preparing to lay to rest seventeen year old Ernesto Wiltshire, also known as “Jun.” He had […]
Shortly before two-thirty this afternoon a Belize City man was shot in the City. According to police, around two-seventeen, Brandon Bennett was shot to the abdomen while he was on Belcan Bridge. He was taken to the K.H.M.H. where he is receiving treatment. Police investigation into this matter continues.
There are still more questions than answers in the manhandling of a B.D.F. recruit videoed on cell phone during a training program on January eighth. The images of recruit Michael Rivas crying out as he is pushed into a trench has stirred controversy on whether or not the tactics used went too far. B.D.F. commander […]
Following the airing of our story on Thursday night, News Five obtained copies of interviews conducted over the past three days with officers of the Bravo and Alpha Platoons involved in the training program. For the most part, those interviewed do not place themselves near the trench where B.D.F. recruit 2-2-9-7-0-2 Michael Rivas was thrown […]
Were the occupants of a vehicle that caught on fire on the Placencia Road on Wednesday morning the victim of foul play? The Belize Police Department has launched an investigation into the mysterious circumstances surrounding the deaths of two unidentified persons, believed to be a husband and wife couple from Europe. While those details are […]
Aside from superbond payments, government is facing another multimillion dollar payment. Glenn D. Godfrey’s GDG Acquisitions LLC has had a judgment of ten million dollars plus in its favour against the Government of Belize upheld by a U.S. Court of Appeal. The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeal, with jurisdiction in Georgia, Alabama and Florida, upheld […]
Belizeans are bracing for the 2017-2018 Budget, which is expected to be presented to the House of Representatives on March thirteenth, and to take effect April first. The presentation to the House is later than past budgets, because G.O.B. is looking everywhere to come up with revenue. Financial Secretary Joseph Waight has said that higher […]
Two disturbing videos of recruits training for the B.D.F. have been obtained by News Five. The first, in its entirety, captures the rigorous and extreme training program, including tear gassing for those aspiring to join the force. The second video contains the images of a young man being shoved into a trench even as he […]
There have been three shootings in two weeks in the Saint Martin De Porres area in Belize City; two of them were fatal. On Wednesday night, seventeen-year-old Everal Augustine left his home and family and rode away toward Aloe Vera Street. Thirty minutes later he was dead; shot at least four times. The suspect is […]
Did the Immigration Department try to sweep the visa foils affair under the rug and turn on the man who instigated an investigation of the matter? Immigration Officer Mark Tench said as much at Wednesday’s public hearings of the Special Senate Select Committee, where he accused the Department of attempting to make him a scapegoat […]
Tench continued to enumerate his version of events at the Public Service Commission hearing for the Senators on Wednesday. He emphasized that the former C.E.O. had nothing to do with the process of argument against his continued employment with the Department and that the Commission agreed that further investigation of the matter should have been […]
In the afternoon, there was further discussion of the visa foil issue. As one of the senior men at the border during the incident, one would have expected that Vernon Leslie would have personally informed the then-Director of Immigration after being unable to gain a satisfactory response from immediate boss Edgar Cano, but no one […]
As noted, a decision was taken, later endorsed by Cano, to basically pretend as if the visas had never gone missing. It involved receiving payment from legitimate travellers seeking a visa. They were issued the numbers corresponding to the missing visas and the money went into the Government Treasury with none the wiser. Vernon Leslie’s […]
At the crack of dawn this morning, a horrible accident occurred on the Placencia Road in the south. A speeding pick-up truck veered off the road and crashed into a lamppost as it heading from Placencia to Santa Cruz. The vehicle burst into flames and its occupants were burnt to death. Initial reports indicated that […]
Immigration Officer of eighteen years’ experience, Mark Tench, appeared before the Senate Special Select Committee this morning as one of two witnesses in the inquiry on the Immigration Department. His name appears as one of the investigators into the eight missing visa foils from the Western Border office that disappeared sometime between Christmas and Boxing […]
And while that may be the biggest bombshell out of today’s public hearings, what exactly happened out west over that holiday period in 2012 has only been obliquely told. In Tench’s version of events to the Commission, he clarified the nature of the handover from the previous shift and what was the tell-tale sign that […]
The investigation widened to include other persons. According to Tench, they tried their mightiest to get the agent identified as selling the foils to Chang and Tillett to confirm other’s involvement, but only one “Khaddafi” from Corozal, known to Tench himself, came forward to assist in the investigation. Mark Tench, Former Supervisor of Immigration, […]
Tench told the Public Service Commission that his advice to Edgar Cano and Vernon Leslie to call the police in relation to the missing foils was not taken. Instead, he was brought up on disciplinary charges of misconduct in relation to violations of the Financial and Stores Orders for not properly reporting the loss of […]
