Keon Williams Myvette, a.k.a “Duppy”, 26, an electrician of York Street, was executed tonight just after 6 o’clock on Lancaster Street. He died from three gunshots to the head, and reportedly, there was also another victim who has only been identified by residents of the area as Mark Rowley, who is currently undergoing treatment at the hospital.
It is not clear at this time how serious Rowley’s injuries are.
Residents told us that sometime after 6, they heard five gunshots ring out. They emerged when they figured it was safe and saw Myvette on the ground bleeding from the head, and Rowley, also injured. We were told that both men were gambling at a green table on the street corner when two men rode up on bicycles (no descriptions of the men are available to us at this time) and began shooting at them.
It is still unclear at this time how many people were near the gambling table, but we were told that the men usually gamble at that same spot every night. Some of the residents told us that they felt that this was a retaliatory attack on Myvette. He had recently been acquitted of a murder charge back in July 2010 in a retrial.
He was accused of the shooting death of Michael “Papa” Gladden, 32, on Lovely Lane on February 28, 2007. His first trial before Justice Adolph Lucas in November of 2008 ended in a hung jury when after nearly six hours of deliberation, the jury in that case could not reach a unanimous verdict on the murder charge.
Myvette was defended at that time by senior counsel Simeon Sampson. He had remained silent in the first trial.
In the second trial he was represented by attorney Anthony Sylvestre, and after 4 hours and 39 minutes, he was acquitted of murder and the alternative charge of manslaughter. In his defense for this trial, he gave an unsworn statement that he was not in the area at the time of Gladden’s murder. He said he was at his father’s house until later in the day when police came for him, and also, he said that the police forced him to give a statement that he had killed Gladden.
Residents also told us tonight that, actually, someone had already tried to kill Myvette, but because no one had been hurt, he chose not to report it to police.
On Thursday of last week, Lancaster Street was also in the news. Police say that they visited the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital, where Jeremy Muslar, a laborer of a Belize City address, was seen with a gunshot wound in the right side of the nose. Shawn Garbutt, a laborer of a Belize City address, had also been shot, but in the right leg.
Police say that both victims were walking with a friend, Whitfield Fisher, on Lancaster Street, when they were approached by a 17-year-old minor, armed with a sawed-off double-barrel shotgun. The minor then fired several shots, causing the injuries.