On Sunday, November 4, 2007, seven men went on a fishing trip and did not return. Six days later, the badly decomposed body of Magistrate Richard Swift, one of the missing men, was found at Middle Caye on Glover’s Reef at around two-thirty on the afternoon of Saturday, November, 10.
There has been no word or sightings of the other six men – Derrick Escobar, Ismael and Abner Quiros, Egbert “Nick” Nicholson, Ealon Reyes and Gustavo Briceño. The men had been seen travelling from Belize City aboard a twenty-foot Mexican style skiff around nine on that fatal Sunday morning en route to their usual fishing grounds between Long Caye and English Caye.
On October 28, 2008, three jurors were empanelled at the Magistrate’s Court at the start of a Coroner’s Inquest to determine the cause of the death of Magistrate Swift. After listening to the testimonies of nineteen witnesses, the inquest ended around 12:00 noon today.
Alfred Barrow, captain of the “Busy Bee,” discovered Swift’s fully clothed body, lying face down on top of the reef. Following the discovery of Swift’s body, hope was re-ignited that the other missing men would be found, and an intense search got under way, with the use of helicopters, Belize Coast Guard boats, private boats and many divers, combing the waters in the immediate vicinity of where the men were last seen, somewhere around St. George’s Caye. The search extended to as far south as Punta Gorda and Honduras.
The grim news coming out of today’s Coroner’s Inquest is that Richard Swift died of unnatural causes. The cause of his death has been listed as a ruptured kidney, abdominal trauma and internal hemorrhage.
Magistrate Harrison Hulett told Amandala this afternoon that Swift died of unnatural causes, but there is no person or persons before the court to answer for his death.
Hulett said that after seven years have passed, if there is no discovery of the other men, they will be presumed to have died.