BELIZE CITY, Tues. Sept. 18, 2012
One man is dead and the other man is nowhere to be found after the two of them were seen sleeping together in a bed by friends of the deceased, who live in the same house.
Wilmer Alexis Esquivel, 27, was found dead in his bedroom at Corner 12th Street and St. Thomas Street at approximately 8:00 a.m. on Monday, September 17, about five and a half hours after he was seen sleeping with the unknown man.
Esquivel was found stabbed to death in his room and police say they have identified the man who was sleeping with him as Jose Humberto Gabarrete.
His friends and fellow tenants told Amandala that Esquivel came home around 11:00 p.m. that Sunday along with a man who they had never seen before, and when they engaged him in conversation and asked him his name, he gave them different names.
The friends said that they began to get suspicious, because the man apparently did not want his name known.
The two men then went into Esquivel’s room and they began to drink, but they turned off the light and stopped the music. The friends said that around 2:30 in the morning they peeped into the room and saw the two men sleeping.
Police reports are that on Monday, September 17, they visited the home, and in a room on the upper level of the two-flat house they saw the body of Wilmer Alexis Esquivel, a Honduran, lying face up on his bed with blood coming out of his mouth and a stab wound in the left upper side of his back.
Police said that their investigation revealed that Esquivel was socializing with a man in his room during the night of Sunday, September 16 and the morning of Monday, September 17, and that he was discovered dead by Ostin Mitchell, who also rents a room in the same building.
The body was taken to the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital, where it was pronounced dead on arrival around 8:35 a.m. on Monday, September 17.
The friends said that they are not sure what time the stranger escaped out of the house. The two of them slept in the doorway in the front of the house; the door was open because it was hot. Also, they slept there because they wanted to see that the stranger came out of the house, they said, but they were not awakened when he left. They said that he left his bicycle on the front verandah, and surmised that he escaped through the back, while they were in the front.
They said that police who came to the house took the bicycle, and when the man’s sister went to the station to claim it, that was when the man’s identity was known.
They are sorry about the death of their friend, who was friendly and helpful. They lived like a family with him, they said, and he had been living in the house with them for over 7 years. They are trying to raise money to send his body to his hometown for his funeral.
Wilmer Esquivel is the father of a son who lives in Honduras.
Police have not yet captured Gabarette, who they believe is now on the run.