LADYVILLE, Belize District, Tues. Oct. 22, 2019– At about 8:00 last night, Brandon Bennett, 26, a laborer of Louise Bevans Street, Belize City, was found dead on the side of the Vista Del Mar Boulevard in Ladyville, lying on the ground in pools of his blood. He had been shot multiple times, in the head and chest.
Police said that they found a number of expended bullet casings in the area near him.
The time of, and the circumstances surrounding, the murder are not known, and no one was found in the area where the body was found.
A man who was driving on Vista Del Mar Boulevard towards the Philip Goldson Highway at about 8:00 last night, saw the body of a person in pools of blood on the roadside and alerted Ladyville police.
Police identified the body as that of Brandon Bennett, who is well known to them. Police had charged him for a number of offences. Last month, on September 6, Bennett was charged for being a member of a criminal gang, the Long Beach Crips, for which he pleaded guilty. He was fined $3,500, which was to be paid by January 2020, or he would have to serve 3 years in jail.
Police said that he was also charged for the attempted murder of Moses Moss in 2011, but in 2016, he was acquitted at the Supreme Court by a jury who found him not guilty.
He was also acquitted of other offenses.
In March, 2017, Bennett was shot in the abdomen by one of two men who drove by on a motorcycle.