Residents of the Ebony and Sarstoon Street area continue to struggle with the crushing loss of a prominent sportsman and area resident to gunfire shortly after the Christmas weekend.
Randolph “Panta” Hinks, 30, lived with his parents, mother Rose Williams, 63, and stepfather Elvis Robateau, 50, at the apartment complex situated at the corner of Ebony and Sarstoon Streets in Belize City.
They were at home, Apartment #2 in the complex, watching the evening news on Tuesday night, December 29, with two other men, when gunshots rang out.
At the end of the volley, Hinks lay dead inside the house, shot multiple times. Williams was hit by a bullet in the left foot, near the shin, and Robateau was hit in the left upper back, left shoulder and right hand. They were both treated at the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital, but Williams was released and Robateau discharged himself. A subsequent post-mortem confirmed the cause of death for Hinks as exsanguination from a gunshot injury to the heart.
Those are the bare facts of the case, but they do not go nearly far enough in chronicling the impact the shooting had on the area.
Area residents were unanimous in praising Hinks, a clerk at the Belize City Council, as a stellar athlete – with credits in interoffice basketball, football and especially softball, who was working to end the violence in the City streets – and condemning the vicious killer who ruthlessly cut his life short.
Amandala understands that bullets, said to be from a 9-millimeter gun, were fired through the louver windows of the apartment, tearing through everything in their path, and also, that the killer may have entered the apartment itself. Reports reaching us are that between 8 and 15 expended shells were recovered at the scene.
However, family members believe that neither “Panta” nor his parents may have been the intended target. He had only just returned from the United States on vacation.
Family members say Hinks was trying to make peace with neighborhood youths who had gotten in a “beef” with a nephew of his, one of the two men also said to be inside Apartment #2 during the shooting.
Police investigations continue and no suspects have been detained.