_{Alexander Munoz and Henry Osorio, deceased}

by Charles Gladden

BELMOPAN, Fri. Feb. 28, 2025

Two young men lost their lives on Thursday, February 27, during a swimming mishap at the Guanacaste National Park in Belmopan.

The tragic incident took place shortly before 4:00 p.m. that Thursday when four students of the University of Belize—two males and two females—went to the national park to swim. All four persons were in the water when 19-year-old Alexander Munoz of Guinea Grass Village, Orange Walk District, began to drift away from them, and 22-year-old Henry Osorio of Belmopan decided to rescue his friend.

_{Guanacaste National Park; area where the deceased were socializing}

However, the strong waves were overwhelming, causing them both to become fatigued and to sink under the water. The two females with them, Coralyse Perez and Kirsten Duran, attempted to save them but were unsuccessful.

They alerted police officers, who arrived at the area and retrieved Munoz and Osorio from the water. However, no signs of life were observed upon their removal.

“My immediate reaction was to inform my other classmates about it. I told them to keep calm, to keep their mind together, to meditate about what’s going on, and to not panic about what had happened, because it had already happened and we cannot do anything. So, basically, I was counseling them,” said Hector Maldonado, a classmate of the deceased.

Classmates of the deceased held a grief circle where the students shared their memorable moments with them.

“We work with a professional team of mental health professionals, and they started by going through the grief process with the students and sharing some information about what they might be feeling, and helping them recognize those emotions and accept them as natural,” said Dr. Martin Cuellar, Dean of Student Affairs at the University of Belize. “We talked a lot about the light of the candle representing the life of the boys, and the light that they can leave behind, and that the way students can carry in their hearts as part of their legacy and their memory,” he added.

One student, Zoe Sutherland, described to reporters her experience in the grief circle.

“I feel like we as a community came together and did what we had to do to establish this trust and communication to grieve [during] this time, and I think that did help me and [most] of us in this situation,” she said.

“I was closer with Alex, and I remember one day we skipped [Chemistry] because our teacher, no offense to him, but he didn’t know how to teach the topic very well; but we skipped [Chemistry] and he’s like, ‘let me show you the river’ and this was like, five, because we had a very late [Chemistry] class. So we left and we stopped by the store, we got some snacks, and he showed me a river, and he went over the whole topic. He was like, ‘I brought you here so I can teach you’; and that’s one thing I will always miss, his enthusiasm and willingness to do anything, especially for me. He always helped with anything. If I needed him there, he would be there. He was the main reason I passed chemistry in my second semester,” Sutherland added.

The Commissioner of Police, Chester Williams, confirmed that the group had been drinking alcohol before the boys’ untimely death.

The deceased students were both in a Bachelor’s in Biology program at UB.