BELIZE CITY, Mon. Nov. 30, 2015–The two young men who were escorted into the court building this morning walked into the courtroom without the slightest look of apprehension on their faces, as they stood before the Magistrate who arraigned them on a capital offense for which they were not required to enter a plea.
Keon Dennison, 18, a construction worker who gave his address as River Estate, Dangriga; and Tyrone Reid, 19, a construction worker of a Belmopan address, are accused of the Thursday, November 26 murder of Ruben Perez, a businessman of Vernon Street, Belize City. They were remanded to the Belize Central Prison until their next scheduled court appearance on January 29, 2015.
The video footage captured by a camera in Perez Hardware store shows that on Thursday, November 26, at 3:17 p.m., Perez had gotten up from behind his desk where he was sitting with his phone in his hand. He walked towards the entrance of his business and two men were seen entering the building.
Their stay inside was brief. The video shows a brief struggle with the deceased, Perez, and the two men who had entered his hardware store.
A neighbor who lives nearby told Amandala that shortly after the men entered the building on Thursday she heard some loud sounds, but did not pay too much attention to them, because she thought that what she heard were “popshots.”
The neighbor said she realized that something had happened when she saw the police pull up at Perez’s hardware store.
The two men had since fled, one of them turning back briefly to grab Perez’s cell phone before they rode off on bicycles, heading in the direction of the Lord Ridge Cemetery, on the George Price Highway.
Police investigators told the media on Friday that the motive for the shooting was robbery.
Police have also confirmed that Perez’s cell phone was found in the possession of one of the accused men.
Perez was shot twice – once in the abdomen and once in the head. He was rushed to the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital, where doctors attended to him, but he succumbed to his injuries shortly after he arrived at the hospital.