“It’s a shame to see what crime has come to now.”
So said an observer to Amandala on Duck Lane in Belize City on Friday afternoon, as area residents cleaned away the blood on the street left by the broad daylight murder of Grant’s Alley resident George Pipersburgh, Jr., 31, around 1:05 p.m..
According to police, Pipersburgh had been riding a small silver and pink ladies’ bicycle from the direction of Regent Street West onto Duck Lane, apparently headed for Water Lane, when two dark-skinned men met him and one opened fire, one bullet catching him in the left side of the face, near the eye.
The shot proved to be fatal and Pipersburgh was pronounced dead on arrival at the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital. A post-mortem conducted this afternoon pinpointed the cause of death as massive brain trauma as a result of the gunshot wound.
Apart from the official post-mortem results, little is known about why anyone wanted Pipersburgh dead.
Residents in the area whom we spoke with shortly after the body was taken away by police claimed to have neither seen nor heard anything, and were as surprised as anyone to find that death had come to their doorsteps.
Late on Sunday and again today, Amandala visited family members of Pipersburgh in Belize City in an attempt to shed light on why he was killed, and what kind of person he was. But his relatives told us in no uncertain terms that they had previously agreed among themselves not to speak to any member of the press, and insisted that they wished to avoid a “media circus” surrounding the death of George, and that they needed to “grieve in private.”
“Media circus” or not, Pipersburgh’s is the 116th murder of 2010 according to our unofficial statistics, and the 9th to date for November.
Pipersburgh, we understand, was not a known associate of any gang in Belize and had no criminal record to speak of, but we are reliably informed that he had been deported from the United States several years ago for unspecified reasons.
Pipersburgh is survived by a 7-year-old daughter and many relatives and friends. Funeral services are scheduled for tomorrow, Tuesday, at Trinity Assembly of God at Mile 2 ½, Western Highway, beginning at 2:00 p.m.