Amandala has learned that Police Inspector Dennis Lopez of Belmopan was arrested today and charged with attempted murder and dangerous harm and appeared in Magistrate’s Court late this evening, where he was read his charges and remanded.
Inspector Lopez, of the Anti-Drug Unit, is accused of shooting Steven Buckley, 38, of Belize City, after police, in a mobile unit, ordered the vehicle Buckley was in to stop on Kraal Road on April 28, 2010.
Buckley, Marlon Myers, 34, and Alfonso Juarez, 23, were returning from their worksite when Lopez and four other police officers in a gold Isuzu DMax stopped the vehicle on reported suspicions that it was similar to a vehicle used in the commission of another shooting earlier that night.
In what he claimed was an accident, the Inspector reportedly opened fire on the vehicle with a Department-issued 12-gauge shotgun, penetrating the windshield and hitting Buckley in the face and head. The construction worker was released from the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital on Monday. He is now at home, but complains of partial paralysis of his right side, leg and arm.
Inspector Lopez was remanded to prison until August 3, as the offence was committed with a firearm, which makes him ineligible for bail at the Magistrate’s Court level.