We met the commissioner at an impromptu evening briefing to respond to the spate of gang violence that has enveloped the city this week.
That culminated last night in a wild shootout between rival gangs - with one group barging into the territory of another gang, guns blazing. When the smoke cleared one of the turf invaders lay dead and two others were injured.
Police say that man is 23-year-old Carrel Sanchez.
Today, his family gathered to mourn their loss - another family member torn from them by gun violence. Courtney Menzies visited them today and has this story.
An exchange of gunfire last night in Belize City left one man dead and two others with injuries. According to police reports, 23-year-old Carrel Sanchez and three other men hopped the fence of a yard on Logwood Street - a distance away from Sanchez's Flamboyant Street home - and allegedly opened fire towards a house, hitting the men on the verandah.
That's when someone from inside the nearby alley pulled out a firearm and fatally shot Sanchez. He died on the spot, under this house.
Shanice Reyes, who shared a child with him, said she heard the shots but didn't know it was Sanchez until she got out on the scene. And after hours of crying, she told us that the hardest part is knowing her almost 2-year-old has lost her hero.
Voice of: Shanice Reyes, Mother of His Child/Friend
"We talk on the regular, like normal, he'll ask me what's going on, I'll answer he. The baby lived behind here so I would text he and ask what the baby is doing or when I'm supposed to come for the baby, I will see him. We weren't together but we were co-parenting, that was great, can't complain. Me and him weren't together but the love was always there and he make sure he always put me on my foot, he made me the woman who I am today."
"Those people hurt me. They scarred my baby for life. She have to live without a dad for the rest of her life, knowing her dad is her everything. They took away somebody that, if you're sad, Carrel will make you happy, he will clown you, he's quiet, he doesn't even mess with anybody like that."
Courtney Menzies:
"And did he ever say that somebody was targeting him in any kind of way?"
Voice of: Shanice Reyes, Mother of His Child/Friend
"No."
"I'm hurt, I have a lot of mixed emotions. I feel empty, I don't even know how to face my baby, nothing."
And as for Sanchez's accomplices, they made a run for it, but police were able to detain two of them and they believe they also found the murder weapon partially hidden at the entrance of the alley.
Another relative of this family, Ronald Michael, was killed back in January 2020.
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