A family is mourning the loss of a beloved father after he was discovered brutally murdered at his work site at Chuc’s Service Station (Esso), on Bullet Tree Road, San Ignacio, Cayo District, early Sunday morning.
Julian Lara, 69, a Honduran national, and resident of Santa Elena Town, Cayo District, had only been employed at Chuc’s Service Station as a watchman a month prior to his homicide. Lara, who was unarmed, was discovered lying face down in a pool of blood.
His hands were tied behind his back and his feet were bound. His shoe laces were used to bind his hands and feet, but the murderers had set his shoes, after apparently taking them off, neatly next to his body.
The father of three was stabbed three times, twice in the throat and once in the chest; he bled to death almost immediately. His personal items were discovered scattered around his body,
According to San Ignacio’s Officer in Charge, Inspector Claudio Mai, the police have since detained two young men and are searching for a third suspect.
The father of three had recently started working on weekends at the gas station.
Lara’s son, Jose Lara, 32, a Honduran national as well, told us during a phone interview today that, although his father worked as a watchman at Chuc’s, it was not a post he nor his children would have allowed him to take in Honduras, because of the level of violence in that country. There, he said, the wives of security guards often end up being widows.
Jose is the manager of the bar located in the compound of Chuc’s Service Station, and told us that prior to closing time at 12:25 a.m., Sunday, he recalls the persons detained by police entering his establishment to buy cigarettes.
Jose explained that he recognized one of the detainees as an individual he had often come across around his home in Santa Elena Town.
“That night I closed the bar around 12:25 a.m. [Sunday]. I was closing the windows when my wife [who also works there] came and told me that some boys wanted to buy cigarettes; the lee bwai bought the cigarettes using an old US dollar. We served them and gave them the change.”
According to Jose, he engaged in small talk with the accused, since he had seen them around a few times. “I told them that they were far from their house [in Santa Elena Town] and they told me, ‘deh gyal got we yah, bwai,’ then they walk and gawn,” he recollected.
Jose said that what hurts him even more is the fact that the alleged murderers were familiar with his family and more so, his father.
“Deh lee bwai know my pa, you know; it’s so hard for me; that was my daddy; he was not only my dad, he was my mother, my best friend. I had always been really close to my dad. You know I went home that same evening and he made food for me before he went to work. He was a good man, always friendly, and everybody that knows him knows that he was a good man, and never had problems with anybody.
“My God! They left me with a hole, a hurt in my chest; the way how they tied up my father’s foot and hands and killed him, then they will fix his shoes so neat beside him”.
Jose was very emotional, sobbing uncontrollably during our telephone conversation, because he had gone to the scene and saw firsthand the brutal end to which his beloved father had been subjected.
Sources have since informed us that one of the detained individuals has confessed to being involved in the murder.
Inspector Mai also told us during our interview today at the San Ignacio police station, that when they went to investigate an incident at Chuc’s Gas Station at around 1:10 a.m., they noticed that the front door of the gas station was shattered, and that the business had been burglarized. Upon scanning the area, they found Lara’s body. According to police, $1,500 was stolen from inside the gas station.
The gas station manager told us during an interview that when he arrived on the scene, Lara’s machete was on top of the pump and music was still playing from the radio near his body.
“What hurt me more is that on March 19, in our country Honduras, they celebrate Father’s Day, and he was talking to my sister about it, but I feel so bad because since I have lived here for twelve years now, you know I don’t remember [Father’s Day] all the time.,” lamented Jose.
“My dad and I always had good communication. He was my everything. I don’t know what to do now,” said Jose.