The Cayo District has been the scene of many brazen holdups in recent memory, but each time, the robbers seem to be producing new heights of terror for their victims, as on Sunday night around 7:15, two robbers, thought to be Guatemalans, attempted a daring holdup and robbery on a bus on the Western Highway in San Jose Succotz village, just outside of Benque Viejo del Carmen Town.
One held a gun, and in the crowded bus, the other produced what he said was a grenade.
But things didn’t go the robbers’ way, and tonight, one of them lies dead, while his accomplice remains at large.
A female passenger overcome by nerves and terror, jumped off the rear of the bus as the incident was being brought under control, and is at the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital in Belize City.
But the emergency also produced heroes even in the close confines of the bus.
According to police, the driver of the D&E bus targeted for the holdup, Ernesto Castillo, Jr., 19, of Benque, was on a regular run from Belize City to Benque, when around the Clarissa Falls junction at Mile 71, as passengers were exiting and entering the bus, he noticed two of his passengers coming forward from the back of the bus, holding what appeared to be a hand grenade and gun, respectively.
Speaking with Amandala today at his company’s office in the western town, Castillo, Jr., son of company owner Ernesto Castillo, Sr., allowed that the robbers may have gotten on the bus as early as San Ignacio Town (police are saying they got on at the junction.)
Castillo said: “… I immediately (put) out the lights, and simultaneously they were saying it was an assault in Spanish as well. And all I did was continue to do what they instructed me to do,” which was, at gunpoint, to continue driving as the gunman relieved conductor Ricardo Quiroz, 31, of his purse.
The gunman went back to the back of the bus to rob passengers, while his grenade-armed companion stayed to the fore, keeping an eye on junior Castillo, holding the grenade as he told him to keep driving slowly, and not to attempt to signal other drivers.
Meanwhile, in the back, between 25 and 30 passengers, including science and math teacher, Jafet Pat, who had been returning from Easter vacation in Belize City, were being rubbed down for their valuables.
Pat told us today from the high school where he teaches, Western Nazarene High School in San Jose Succotz, that he initially had no idea what was going on. The gunman came down and started collecting, pointing his gun in the passengers’ faces (including Pat’s) and demanding their valuables, threatening in Spanish to kill them if they did not comply.
According to Pat, when one elderly woman told him she had nothing to give him, the robber told her in Spanish that she had better find something, or she would be killed.
The robbers managed to get only $2 from Pat; he had wisely hidden his cell phone, money and other valuables inside his bag as his fellow passengers informed him of what was going on.
A reliable source tells Amandala that the gunman, still robbing passengers, turned his gun on one individual and attempted to shoot. The gun apparently jammed, and passengers seized their chance, and jumped on the gunman. According to Pat, the conductor also joined the fray.
Police say this was when the gunman, identified as Wilson Orland Paz Dominguez of Escuintla Santa Lucia Cotzumalguapa Parcla El Jabil, Guatemala, was beaten and stabbed multiple times in the back, leaving blood on the floor of the bus.
At the same time, his unidentified accomplice was unceremoniously stomped out of the bus after attempting to help his companion. He fled and vanished without trace, without any cash or valuables. It is believed he attempted to head west into Guatemala across the Mopan River, which runs beside the highway.
Castillo sped up the bus, heading for the Benque police station, but at this point, Lucia Carillo, 19, a student of Sacred Heart College and a resident of San Jose Succotz, apparently nervous and excited, jumped up, ran to the back of the bus and jumped off. She landed on the asphalt highway face first and suffered a fractured skull.
Carillo, a fourth form student coming back home from Santa Elena Town where she was doing homework, remains in the KHMH tonight, reportedly in critical but stable condition.
The bus arrived in Benque Viejo some minutes later and Castillo drove to the police station, where police took charge of Dominguez and transported him to the San Ignacio Hospital, where he died on arrival.
Neither Pat nor Castillo could give us a detailed description of the hand grenade they both saw, but Castillo told us the grenade in question was green.
According to police, they have recovered the conductor’s purse with a sum of money valued at $788, and various unnamed items stolen from passengers in the robbery.
D&E owner, Ernesto Castillo, Sr., issued his thanks to those who helped subdue one robber and chase off the other. While Castillo, Sr., as both the employer and father of his driver son, was “ a little bit nervous” as reports came in of what was befalling the younger Castillo and his passengers, he never lost hope that his son would make it out safe.
The elder Castillo stated he would push for licenses for all his drivers to keep weapons on board their buses, “to be on the safe side.”
Police continue to look for the escaped robber, who is believed to also be a Guatemalan.