by Charles Gladden
BELIZE CITY, Wed. Aug. 31, 2022
On Monday, Jason “Jungle Rat” Sanchez, 27, was found guilty of the murder of Emmerson Arnold, 35, who was fatally shot on November 28, 2014, while on his way to his workplace at the Belize Water Services Ltd.
According to previous AMANDALA reports, sometime around 7:00 o’clock that morning, Arnold was shot numerous times on Gibnut Street while heading to work by a gunman on a bicycle who was reportedly wearing a hoodie. He reportedly passed away moments after being hit seven times in the back and head. A few days after Arnold’s execution, police, who had received a call from an eyewitness of the shooting shortly after it occurred, arrested and charged Sanchez for murder, and after he was on remand for six years, his murder trial began in the Supreme Court before Justice Herbert Lord in March 2021.
There had been delays in the trial due to the Covid-19 pandemic, but the trial finally was concluded this week. Originally, the prosecution had 12 witnesses scheduled to testify, but only 11 did so in court under oath. The eyewitness who had called police shortly after the shooting and who reportedly saw the slaying while on her way to work and had identified Sanchez, whom she knew as “Jungle Rat” as the shooter, later refused to testify after receiving several death threats. However, that witness’s written statement was admitted into evidence.
In a statement he gave from the dock in court, Sanchez had denied having the nickname “Jungle Rat” and insisted that he was not the gunman who killed Arnold. Justice Lord nonetheless found him guilty after indicating in a 70-page judgment that the prosecution had proved beyond a reasonable doubt that he had killed Arnold. His sentence hearing is scheduled for October 17.