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World Down Syndrome Day

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PC Manuel Hill, 36, acquitted of abetment to murder

GeneralPC Manuel Hill, 36, acquitted of abetment to murder
This afternoon in Belmopan, police constable Manuel John Hill, 36, of Roaring Creek, Cayo District, was acquitted by a jury of nine of abetment to murder in the courtroom of Justice Troadio Gonzalez.
  
Hill, a veteran police officer of the Anti-Drug Unit, K-9 Division who was with the Police Department for 12 years prior to being charged in March of 2009, is alleged by police to have met with a Belmopan-based Chinese businessman sometime between February 1 and March 7 of 2009.
  
Police allege that the businessman offered and handed Hill money to arrange a “hit” on an Orange Walk rival of that businessman. The accused officer then approached a close friend, identified as ex-policeman Kevin “Cowboy” Alvarez, 32, of Belize City, to carry out the hit and, it was implied, may have given him money to do so.
  
Alvarez is accused of having slit the throat of Taiwanese Hui Lin Chen, 38, on March 14, 2009, around 9:30 p.m. during a struggle in the second floor warehouse of Mai’s Store on Park Street in Orange Walk, where Chen worked, then leading police on a chase down Bakers Street and Riverside Street to the New River, where police say he shot a special constable and woman police constable while refusing to surrender himself.
  
A third constable was injured by gunfire when Alvarez was cornered at the old slaughterhouse on Slaughterhouse Road before police finally subdued him. He was later arraigned on murder and other charges and is awaiting trial.
  
From the beginning, Hill has claimed, through his attorneys (at that time Dickie Bradley and Linsbert Willis), that his fellow officers set him up to take the fall. He was asked to meet with the investigators on the case, supposedly to assist them in building up the case against the alleged mastermind, only for the police to turn around and charge him, Hill, while deciding to use the businessman as a witness. The businessman was never charged.
  
From the witness stand, Hill told the court that he gave a statement and cooperated because he was told by a senior officer that he would be given immunity from charges and used as a Crown witness, and denied the charges against him.
  
The jury, which was reduced to 8 because a juror was granted permission by the court to take final examinations at his university, began deliberations at 11:26 a.m. and returned with the verdict at 1:50 p.m.
  
Hill was defended at trial by Senior Counsel Simeon Sampson, while Crown Counsel Trienia Young prosecuted.

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