Harrison Eugene Staine, 42, an unemployed of Wagner’s Lane, Belize City, was murdered with a single gunshot to the face. Staine leaves behind three children, one of whom is in Belize, and the other two living abroad, and many grieving relatives of a very big and very close family.
Police say that yesterday, they visited the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital where they observed Staine with an apparent gunshot wound to the left side of the mouth.
Initial police investigations revealed that at 7:15 p.m. yesterday, Staine was riding his bicycle on Berkeley Street headed in the direction of West Canal, when he was shot in the face. He was transported to the KHMH where he was pronounced dead on arrival. Police say that their investigations continue.
Today, Amandala spoke to Staine’s brother, Steven Staine, who was at the morgue waiting for the post-mortem. He told us that sometime around 7:30 p.m., he had gotten home from work and was getting ready to go to a wake for another of his family members who died of natural causes. He said that he got a call saying that his brother was shot and as a result, he was unable to attend the wake for that family member, but instead he had to start to make arrangements for his brother’s body.
Steven noted that his brother had an entry wound and an exit wound from the gunshot blast, which, they suspect, came from a shotgun. He said that the family was trying to advise his brother to move out of the neighborhood of Wagner’s Lane, but he refused, saying that the area is where he was born and raised.
He told us that his brother is mentally challenged and as a result, he was unable to be employed. He also said that Harrison was an innocent man who was killed in a brutal fashion, whose only crime was living in a bad area. Harrison, according to Steven, was not a part of any gang, nor was he associated with any unsavory elements in the city.
Steven Staine also made reference to all the recent murders, including Shelmadine Sanchez, Ivan Francis Jr., Hellen Yu, and Eyan Arnold, all of whom were apparently murdered innocently.
He was especially upset about Yu’s murder, citing that this young lady was murdered in her own home; he said that nowhere is safe in Belize, not even people’s homes. He also told us that he feels that the underlying problems are not just the gang-related elements, additionally noting that our crime issues are not being addressed fully by the authorities, as murders continue to occur.
Steven Staine: I don’t think that it’s not only the bad neighborhoods; it’s also the whole country …and no one is addressing them (the problems). Tomorrow, I guarantee there will probably be another murder to speak about, and like I said, no one is seriously addressing the problems. We don’t have any social, economic or political justice. There is no justice because all the systems, including the justice system, are failing us badly. I don’t know where to turn. You see that young lady Shelly (Shelmadine Sanchez), I know her personally, the witness to the prosecution, and what happened… She died! Apparently the guy (Ivan Francis, Jr.) saw what happened to Sanchez, and what happened…They found him dead the next day. So what will we do?
This is not the first time that Harrison Staine was shot. On Friday June 11, 2010, at around 8:15 p.m., Staine was walking on South Street, very near his home on Wagner’s Lane, when a lone gun man walked up to him and fired three shots. He was shot in the neck and jaw, but luckily, he was only grazed. He was not so lucky this time.