Charles Alexander Good, 62, made his last, great stand in front of Belize City’s Battle Field Park — defiantly challenging what he perceived as the politics of backwardness and the victimization of the helpless and innocent. He was a man on a mission, an honorable man and always the uncompromising soldier of principle.
On Tuesday morning, October 3, Charles Good, the Belize Defence Force retired captain, passed away at the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital. This afternoon, Dr. Mario Estradabran, the government pathologist, performed an autopsy and determined that the cause of Captain Good’s death was “neurogenic shock.”
Emergency Medicine on the internet describes neurogenic shock as follows: “Neurogenic shock occurs after an injury to the spinal cord. Sympathetic outflow is disrupted, resulting in unopposed vagal tone. The major clinical signs are hypotension and bradycardia. Acute spinal cord injury is most commonly seen with blunt trauma accounting for approximately 85 to 90 percent of cases. The most commonly affected area is the cervical region, followed by the thoracolumbar junction, the thoracic region, and the lumbar region. Neurogenic shock must be differentiated from “spinal” shock. Spinal shock is defined as temporary loss of spinal reflex activity occurring below a total or near-total spinal cord injury.”
Attorney Arthur Saldivar, who had filed a lawsuit on Mrs. Good’s behalf, is in the process of filing another lawsuit, in connection with the death of Charles Good. Saldivar told Amandala this afternoon that he is planning to file a notice of intended prosecution against the Attorney General, The Minister of National Security and the Police Department for the wrongful death of Charles Good.
Saldivar said that police brutality cannot be ruled out as a cause of death of Charles Good.
Good’s autopsy report also stated that he had acute pancreatic hemorrhage. Saldivar said that that condition can occur because he had suffered trauma in the upper part of his abdomen.
“We know that Charles had complained publicly on the airwaves about pain in his abdomen after his encounter with the police,” said Saldivar.
On two occasions, Good was apparently brutalized by the police while he was conducting his peaceful protest to reverse a decision by the Education Department to terminate his wife from her post.
The first incident occurred in front of the Supreme Court when he was allegedly pushed down by a policeman. He had to be rushed to the Emergency Room at the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital on August 19, the first day of the protest.
The second encounter with the police occurred on September 23, when a detachment of policemen forcibly removed Good and his wife from in front of the Supreme Court, claiming that the court was in session and they could not protest there. In this last incident, Charles was unceremoniously thrown into the pan of a police pickup.
Speaking to Amandala this afternoon, Mrs. Hirian Good, Charles’ wife, said that since she lost her job, Charles had been under a lot of pressure. “You know that we were protesting since Patrick Faber fired me from my job. From August 3 Charles start to get worse on me all the time. You know, sugar go up, pressure go up. Then his heart start to give him trouble,” she explained.
“On October 29, we stopped protesting out there (meaning Battle Field Park) because the lawyer (Arthur Saldivar) said that the papers were filed at the Supreme Court. But sometimes when we reach home there was no food to put on the table. All of dis mi di stress out da man.”
Mrs. Good said that on Monday evening sometime around 5:30, she got a call from her daughter, who told her to “hurry come home, because daddy no di feel good.”
“I know that I could not make it home”, Mrs. Good recounted, “so I send the ambulance and they brought him to emergency and I met him there.”
Mrs. Good said that when he reached the hospital, he was sharing jokes, as he usually did. Then blood samples were taken from him, and he was put to bed. According to his wife, he told her that he was experiencing severe pain in the chest. Some minutes before eight that night, Mrs. Good said, he told her to take the kids home because he did not want them to be out late. He asked her to return in the morning and to bring his toothbrush because he suspected he may have had to stay in the hospital.
Mrs. Good said that she got a call around 4:00 a.m. on Tuesday morning from a nurse at the hospital. The caller told her to come to the hospital quickly, because her husband was not feeling well. She said that she managed to reach the hospital at about 5:00 a.m., but on arriving, was told by the security guard upstairs the medical ward that he was “sorry” about her husband.
She said that she still did not realize what had happened. Then the nurse came and indicated to her that she had bad news. It was at that point, Mrs. Good said, that she learned of her husband’s death.
“Up to today, I still cannot believe it”, said Mrs. Good. “They carried me to where the bed deh. I told him, Charles, it’s not time for you to go yet, we nuh done yet.”
“I would ah say Patrick Faber cause this. I sure dah sake ah dat mek my husband dead. Because if I mi got my job, I would ah mi still got my husband. E nuh right weh dem do to me and my husband. When I look at the picture of my husband on the ground whey da police do to him, e nu right,” an emotional Mrs. Good said, as she fought back the tears.
Dr. Estradabran’s finding came as a shocker to Good’s close relatives — and it is also raising more questions than there are coherent answers for, as Good’s family grieves and prepares for his burial — the questions will be asked long after Charlie Good, the relentless warrior, is laid to rest in the picturesque hills of Cayo.
Exactly three months to the date after his wife Hirian Good was terminated from her Ministry of Education job as a school warden, Charles Good passed away.
But during his final three months, the integrity-driven “Charlie” was on a real battlefront — championing the cause of his wife’s dismissal, after Education Minister Patrick Faber had categorized Hirian Good’s firing as just another casualty of the UDP/PUP war over the spoils of victory. The Minister admitted in a TV news interview that the school warden jobs are politically connected.
The apparent injustice brought out the old warrior in Charlie Good, a star goalkeeper for the talent-laden police team and a popular, crowd-pleasing boxer in his youth, and he remained defiant up to the very end.
Even when he and his wife were offered employment by Housing Minister Michael Finnegan, Good concluded that the offer was not as genuine as it first appeared, and he returned to his picket line – even going on a hunger strike that he had to abort because of health reasons.
Captain Good had lived his life with a high degree of military discipline and absolute integrity in whatever he was doing.
At the very young age of eighteen his military career began, when he enlisted in the Honduran military and served there for a few years, before returning to Belize and taking up a job in the Police Special Force (PSF). On the streets, Charlie Good, as he was referred to during those days, became known as a no-nonsense paramilitary man.
After the PSF was disbanded in 1978, Good joined the BDF, where he received a commission as a second lieutenant and was appointed as Officer in Charge of Signals and Communications.
In the 1970s, there were some Guatemalan incursions into Belize and Charles Good was the BDF appointee who would give the British Governor briefings on the sensitive operations regarding the Guatemalan military patrols in Belizean territory.
Good was chosen to attend a number of specialized military training sessions in the US, where he was trained in anti-drugs operations and surveillance techniques. Charlie Good worked with both the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the British MI6.
After he left the BDF, he held a number of different jobs over the years. He was once the Chief of Security for the University of Belize, a job that he retired from, and shortly thereafter, he staged his now famous hunger strike in May 2007, so that the Belize Social Security could pay him his proper benefits.
At the time he staged the hunger strike, he was collecting $77 per week from SSB. His hunger strike was short-lived, as the SSB called him in and arranged a meeting with him to review his benefits.
In February 1999, Charles Good revealed details of a 1984 plot to kill or maim the Amandala publisher Evan X Hyde. Shortly after, he was hired as Chief of Security for the Kremandala compound.
Charles Alexander Good will be laid to rest on Saturday morning in San Ignacio, after a funeral mass at St. Joseph Church in Belize City.
He leaves behind his wife, Hirian Good, and his thirteen children to mourn his passing.
Amandala extends sincerest condolences to the widow and children of Captain Charles Good, a warrior, soldier, a nationalist and a brave man of principle.