As Amandala went to press the night of April 8, there had been no murders in Belize City, or elsewhere, since the brutal death of young security guard and expectant father Steven Lopez, 32, who was killed while doing his job at the Scotiabank in Spanish Lookout – and seven persons had been arrested for that incident.
That murder was #25 for the year, but as we go to press tonight, however, the murder count for the year has shot up dramatically with an unprecedented number of murders happening in April so far.
March had been rough – 12 murders for the month, but if Belizeans thought that perhaps we had turned a corner, that the criminal elements had begun to be “contained,” then what has happened since surely proves us wrong.
Later that Thursday night, after most Belizeans had gone to bed, two young men, relatives, met their deaths within minutes and streets of each other.
Renan Reneau, 25, had been talking to his girlfriend at the corner of Kut Avenue and Supal Street around 10:53 p.m. when death “came for him.”
Minutes later, Ervin “Beans” James, 22, was in a vehicle with friends on Ross Pen Road when his life was cut short with multiple bullets from a passing gunman.
There were at least three shooting reports on Friday, April 9 – on Amara Avenue, at the corner of Mopan and Mahogany Streets near Brown’s Butane, on Cemetery Road near Kevin’s Bar – and then on Saturday, April 10, in San Pedro, Leon Aldana, who thought to rob two hunters on North Ambergris Caye, paid the ultimate price when one shot him dead.
On Sunday, April 11, the carnage reached alarming proportions. A green Ford Explorer was implicated in at least two shooting incidents that day, including the death of Kashief Jeffries, 24, a relative of the Commissioner and son of media personalities Trevor Jeffries and Esme Anderson.
Raheem Velasquez was gunned down in Roaring Creek around 7:15 p.m. Sunday; minutes later, reports started coming in of the attempted robbery on the D&E bus on the Western Highway near San Jose Succotz, where passengers had managed to subdue a gunman and chase his grenade-toting companion. Rounding off the night’s events, Keith Nunez was shot on New Road.
And late Tuesday night, April 13, there was the double shooting of Kevin Lino and Kevin Cassanova at the corner of Waight Street and Fabers’ Road. Also on Tuesday night, there were reports of exchange of gunfire between two vehicles on the Northern Highway (no one was injured).
It is now April 15, 2010, and in that time span, there have been seven murders in five days and numerous other incidents of shooting and gunfire exchanges, not to mention other violent incidents.
Commissioner Crispin Jeffries called a “press meeting” with the media at the Racoon Street police station on Wednesday, at which the quarterly crime statistics were released.
In short, at the end of March, according to the presented statistics, murders were down from 29 to 25; the current count is 32, with the seven April murders.
All other major crime categories – rape and carnal knowledge, robbery, burglary and theft – by contrast, were down significantly in the first three months of the year by police statistics compared with January to March 2009.
But behind every murder, there is a story.
All of the victims were young men in their early to mid-20’s, with the exception of the youngest, Raheem Velasquez, only 16. James, Jeffries, Velasquez, and one of the Kevins all had at least one child. None, with the exception of Aldana, appeared to have any past criminal record, or been involved in significant gang activity (Velasquez lived in “Another World,” home of rival gangs, but was not said to be connected to either). And all, except Aldana, were killed “ride-by” style, snuck up on from behind.
Looking at our unofficial figures thus far, only one female has been killed in all of 2010: Santos de Paz in Orange Walk. Nearly two in every three murders took place in Belize City, and the majority on the Southside. And firearms seem to be the primary weapon of choice: only two stabbings have been reported, one in Belize City (the murder of Biltmore security guard Kaluru Oloungududu in February.)
There have been worse weeks, and worse months. July 2009, for instance, saw over 20 murders, six in the Cayo District in quick succession in the first week, and twice, triple murders within hours of each other in Belize City in the final week.
This week, it has been proven that statistics never tell the whole story. The people of Belize have lost faith and trust. And the killers just keep on killing, and killing, and killing…