Body found stuffed in pit latrine above
The sleepy village of Sandhill, population 1,236, has lost a sister, daughter, mother and greatly valued friend, in the most inexplicable of circumstances. Today Amandala visited the village, tucked between the twists and turns of the Northern Highway at Miles 13-19, to probe deeper into what remains a mysterious set of circumstances.
A number of residents we spoke with maintain that Dorla Pitterson, 45, despite her medical condition and apparent loneliness, lived with relatives in the village and kept a respectable profile. They therefore are at a loss as to why she, of all people, would be killed so brutally, and without apparent remorse. Her battered and bloody body, partly nude, was found stuffed in a pit latrine behind a nightclub in Sandhill.
A Hispanic female roadside vendor whose makeshift fruit and vegetable shop is just a few feet across the highway from where the body was found, told us that Pitterson walked the strip of highway there fairly frequently, and was known to frequent the nightclub, where she was lured to her death. A family member later confirmed this to us before press time.
A male resident we spoke to further down the road at Mile 18 1/2 told us that it was “a shame” the way she died, and expressed his hope that the killer is brought to justice.
Pitterson is the sixth female murdered this year, and the second woman murdered in the Belize Rural Valley in less than a month. Three gunmen shot Karen Crawford, 19, in the back of the head in May at the home of her boyfriend in Bermudian Landing. (Two men, John Chessman and Nelson Henry, were remanded to the Hattieville prison in connection with that incident.
As for the other female murder victims, Yvette Augustine’s husband burned her to death in Dangriga; Mirna Sanabria was shot during a robbery of her family’s grocery store in Cotton Tree, Cayo, while holding her baby; and teenagers Deandra Zetina and Michelle Cattouse were the unfortunate victims of the murder spree occurring just 24 hours after the United Democratic Party were swept into office in early February.
Despite the gruesomeness of this latest murder, June appears set to close as the fourth straight month in which the number of murders has lessened. From a high of 15 in February, the numbers have gone down to 10 in March, 9 in April, 5 in May and so far, 2 confirmed in June.
But that is no consolation to a nation weary of seeing its citizens buried to satisfy the depraved whims of the criminal element in our society.
This evening Amandala managed to contact the family of the deceased Pitterson, who, we were told, are at a house somewhere on the Southside of Belize City preparing to say their final sad goodbyes to their mother, daughter, sister, and friend.
Via cell phone, we spoke to a sister of Dorla Pitterson, who declined to give us her name. She told us that Dorla’s sons, aged 23 and 17 respectively, are taking her death rather hard, particularly the teenager, who was taking exams at school when he was given the bad news.
The devout Adventist, who never married, will be buried next Wednesday at Mount Zion Seventh Day Adventist Church on Yarborough Road, but the family, the sister told us, will always be asking why her sister had to die in such a horrible way. They know they cannot get her back, she concluded, so the next best thing is to hope for her killer to pay.
Today in #1 Magistrate’s Court, the man accused of killing her was denied bail by Chief Magistrate Margaret McKenzie. Orlando Wade, 30, a construction worker of Mile 19, Northern Highway, denies killing Pitterson, but he was remanded for the murder until July 3.
Wade is accused of possibly raping and certainly beating and strangling Pitterson to death, and stuffing her partially nude and bloodied body inside a pit latrine behind a local nightclub, Sylvia’s Cool Spot, in Sandhill sometime between Monday night and Tuesday morning.
A post-mortem conducted yesterday in Belize City confirmed that Pitterson was choked by her killer and hit on the head with a blunt object, causing the injuries that led to her death.
Police say that Pitterson was seen in Wade’s company in the area where the murder must have taken place, around 9:30 Monday night, and that she was heard screaming for help. They suspect that she may have been raped, but definitive results on that will not be known until next week.
The discovery was made around 11:30 a.m. on Tuesday, and frightened Sandhill residents immediately began calling for justice.
They say Pitterson was friendly to all she met on her travels. She was said to be receiving psychiatric care for much of her life for an undisclosed medical condition.
Sandhill residents had nothing but praise for the late Pitterson, said to be a regular churchgoer and well known to residents of the area, as she was frequently seen walking the roads there.
She leaves behind many relatives to mourn her loss, and goes down into Belize’s ledger as 2008’s 43rd murder victim and the second for this month.