by Charles Gladden
BELIZE CITY, Mon. June 24, 2024
On Sunday, June 23, two men were shot in the Lake Independence area, one of them fatally. It is the third shooting to occur in Lake Independence within a week.
The men were identified as Joshua Gillett, who is recovering, and Stanley Moore, who succumbed to the gunshots. Both men are from the Conch Shell Bay area of Belize City.
According to reports, on Sunday, June 23, after 4:00 p.m., both men were in a BMW vehicle, with Gillett behind the wheel and Moore as his passenger, when they were ambushed at the junction of Mahogany and Santa Barbara Streets by a lone gunman.
An injured Gillett managed to rush to the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital with a motionless Moore in the passenger seat beside him. They arrived with the vehicle’s windshield covered with bullet holes, and Gillett was taken inside the hospital for treatment, where he is recovering.
Following the deadly shooting, Moore’s mother posted on social media a premonition expressed by her son three days before his death, indicating that he had been constantly harassed by police officers and predicting his death.
When the media asked ACP Hilberto Romero, Regional Commander of the Belize Police Department’s Eastern Division, whether officers were harassing Moore, causing him to fear for his life, he declined to comment, saying he did not possess knowledge of that.
ACP Romero stated that a person has been arrested, who they believe orchestrated the crime, and murder charges are to be brought against that individual. Meanwhile, another person is being sought by the department.
Police believe that the shooting is gang-related. “It has some gang element with this. There are several ongoing operations at this time to minimize the threats of retaliation,” ACP Romero mentioned.
As mentioned above, this is the third shooting to occur in the Lake Independence area since Tuesday, June 18, when 20-year-old mechanic, Jahiem Fitzgibbon was killed on La Croix Boulevard while repairing a van with his father. Then on Thursday of that week, shots were fired at a female by two men on a motorcycle while she was inside a vehicle reportedly belonging to a high-profile street figure. The woman was unharmed.
Reports suggest that the string of shootings stemmed from a concert held in Belize City several weeks ago.
As of press time, multiple charges have reportedly been laid upon 24-year-old Marquis Conorque of Belize City; those charges are for: murder; attempted murder; use of deadly means of harm; and dangerous harm.