An attempted robbery in Orange Walk descended into a gun battle between cops and robbers – the prime suspect, police say, being a man who had been one of their own. That man is ex-police constable Kevin “Cowboy” Alvarez, 32, who was shot in the upper left abdomen. However, the deep tragedy is the brutal murder of robbery victim, 38-year-old Hui Lin Chen, a store attendant who had his throat slit by the robbers.
According to the officer in charge of Orange Walk, Supt. Joseph Myvett, they received reports of a situation on Park Street in Orange Walk Town, south of Queen Elizabeth Central Park at about 10:00 p.m. on Saturday.
Half an hour earlier, Mai Quin Yo, 41, the owner of Mai’s Store on Park Street, had just finished closing his store for the night and was on his way to his residence at the top section of the building when his wife alerted him that one of his workers, identified as Hui Lin Chen, was fighting with someone inside the warehouse on the second floor.
Mai headed back and saw a dark-skinned man dressed in khaki short pants running from the area. According to a reliable source, Mai was armed with his own gun and fired 4 shots at the retreating intruder, but missed.
At the entrance he found Chen, motionless, in a sitting position with his throat apparently slit. Chen was later pronounced dead at the Northern Regional Hospital.
Amandala understands that the suspect jumped a fence located at the back of the premises and headed for Bakers Street, then down to Riverside Street near the Tourist Information Center on the banks of the New River.
It was there that police cornered the man: two teams, one returning from a domestic dispute, the other on the case since the first reports. BDF personnel were also on the scene.
The officers verbally pleaded with the suspect for the next five minutes to drop his weapon, a 9 mm pistol, but he refused. Supt. Myvett told Amandala today that he reportedly told them, “I noh wah come out because if I come out unu wah shoot me, unu wah hurt me.”
From cover in the surrounding bushes, he fired on the group with the 9 mm and a .38 revolver, injuring special constable Noel Castillo in the abdomen and left arm and WPC Melanie Anderson in the right upper leg.
He then ran down the riverside to Slaughterhouse Road, where police, led by P.C. Roger Briceño, again cornered him. Briceño, in the lead, near the fence on the right side of the old slaughterhouse from which the street gets its name, approached and got embroiled in a gun fight with the suspect, during which he was shot three times, twice in the abdomen and once in the left leg. Police returned fire and finally subdued the suspect, injuring him in the upper left abdomen.
All three injured officers and the suspect, since identified as ex-police constable “Cowboy” Alvarez, were taken to the Northern Regional Hospital. WPC Anderson has been treated and released; Castillo and later Briceño were taken to the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital in Belize City and are stable there, while Alvarez remains under guard at press time tonight at the NRH.
In a press conference this morning at the O.W. station, Commissioner of Police Gerald Westby praised the O.W. department for their handling of the situation, and promised to address the situation of better protection for officers on the job. The trio of officers that were shot this weekend join two others from Belize City who were shot last week, and another patrolman from Belize City who was stabbed while socializing, on the list of injured officers in the last two weeks.
According to the Commissioner, it is the first time in his memory that so many officers have been injured on duty.
Regarding the suspect, who joined the force in 1996 according to Amandala’s research but was let go from the Department in 2001 after multiple complaints and an official report of negligence concerning a murder case, the Commissioner described him as “no stranger to the law” and “serious and deadly”.
“It is still sad for me to see when officers, both senior and junior, have to be disciplined for breaking the law, even though I have dealt with more officers, especially senior ones, for infractions than any previous Commissioner,” Westby told the gathering.
Alvarez was later reinstated to the force in 2002, and was still a constable when in 2003 he was arrested and charged along with two of his brothers for the New Year’s Eve murder of Albert Pennil at Friendship Restaurant on the Northern Highway. He beat that rap, we understand, but it is not clear when he left the Department thereafter (he is now a tour guide).
Police have recovered the knife thought to have been used in the murder of Chen and both pistols Alvarez allegedly used during the Riverside shootout.
And while the Department is quick to say that it only considers Alvarez a “prime suspect” at this time, his family is preparing for a legal challenge and trying to build a case of possible police abuse. Police say that they are looking for a second suspect in connection with the case.
Lisa Alvarez, the suspect’s sister, who spoke with Amandala moments after being allowed to see her brother in his heavily guarded ward at the Northern Regional this afternoon, says she heard of Kevin’s plight from her mother in Belize City while returning from a trip on Sunday afternoon.
She says she immediately went to the hospital to find out what was going on, but was not allowed to see her brother and was instead re-directed to the police station.
After several hours’ wait, she contacted the local office of Legal Aid, who sent a representative to the police this morning. That representative was later allowed to see Alvarez, and interceded with police to allow his family to see him.
According to the family, Alvarez has, in addition to his gunshot wound, gashes to the head and under the eye, a dislocated right shoulder, black and blue blood-clotted eyes and various bruises.
Those injuries, the family alleges, came from a beating reportedly administered to Alvarez by officers in civilian clothing. Amandala at press time was unable to confirm this with Orange Walk Police.
In a conversation with his family, Alvarez claimed not to remember anything before allegedly being beaten. Presumably because of his condition, police are yet to question him, though they have him chained down and guarded by three armed officers.
The family at this point believes that the Department has little evidence against Alvarez and no positive identification, but in any case will mount a legal challenge if and when Alvarez is charged.
From the other side, Tony Lee, manager of a Chinese restaurant minutes from the site of the incident and the Orange Walk branch president of the Chinese Association, describes Chen as a friendly, ambitious person, warm to everyone he met; he will be sorely missed by his friends in Orange Walk. A post-mortem on his body was conducted today at the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital in Belize City.
Lee says his group will call a meeting with the Orange Walk Town Council and local business associations to discuss ways in which business owners can defend themselves and to petition the Government to reinstate capital punishment as a deterrent to the crime situation. Lee believes that only with the return of capital punishment will murderers think twice about what they do.