Police and Belize Emergency Rescue Team (BERT) personnel were quickly on the scene and the man, who was identified as Manuel Vellos, was placed on a stretcher and taken down the stairs to the ambulance.
Manuel had been chopped nine times, and seemed to have been left for dead. However, some young men who work at the Lords Ridge Cemetery heard his pain-filled and pitiful cries, and decided to check on him. That was when they found him lying on the bed, covered in blood. He was not speaking and was moaning loudly, and they saw his little puppy lying on a basket cover, crying with him.
The old, abandoned building in which Manuel was found is in the BEL compound. The building has no front walls, nor door, and is made of concrete, without any partitions inside. Inside the house were only some dirty clothes jumbled in a corner, and the bed that Manuel was lying on.
He had three chop wounds on both his left and right hands, that went to the bone, and a chop in his head was bleeding profusely. There was also a chop wound near his right ear and one on his left foot.
Police radioed a description of two young, brown-skinned men believed to be the machete-men. One reportedly had dreadlocks, and the other had a tattoo with three dots under one eye. They both had been riding bicycles.
An officer further radioed that one of the accused men had a machete, and had headed onto Vernon Street.
From the scene, police took the machete, believed to have been one of the weapons used in the attack on Manuel. They also believe that the men entered the yard from the rear, which can be approached from the cemetery. There is an opening in the fence, added police.
It is unclear at this time why Manuel was so brutally assaulted, and police wonder if his past has some bearing on the crime. A man who saw the victim said that he had given him a fan to fix some time ago, and later found out that the victim had sold the fan.
Another man, who seemed to know the victim by name, said that he, the victim, had asked for a job one day, and he allowed him to wash his car. The man alleged, however, that the victim stole something from inside the vehicle, but was caught.
Police are asking anyone with information on the case to call the nearest police station.