BELIZE CITY, Thurs. Apr. 16, 2015–In January 2011, police arrested and charged a 17-year-old minor and two adults for the December 26, 2010 murder of Nigerian taxi driver Francis Chukwu, 37, who was found slumped behind the wheel of his taxi, shot in his head while driving on Pitter Street.
The two adults, Egbert Daly, 19, and Jermaine Zuniga, 31, were released from the murder charge when the Director of Public Prosecution, in November 2011, instructed that the charge be withdrawn from against them due to a lack of evidence.
The case against the remaining accused, Kendale Green, who is now 22, was committed to the Supreme Court, and this Monday, April 13, Green’s murder trial began in the Supreme Court of Justice Adolph Lucas, who is hearing the case without a jury.
Green gave a caution statement to police, but when he was taken to the Magistrate’s Court before Senior Magistrate Sharon Fraser to be arraigned on the murder charge, he told the court that the only reason he gave the statement to police was that he was beaten and harassed for a long time while in police custody. So, in order to end the brutality, he gave police the caution statement, he said.
Daly and Zuniga had also claimed that they were beaten by police while in custody.