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Earlier on we showed you the anguish that family members of those injured in the grenade blast were experiencing last night at the KHMH. Well, it’s now the day after. One 16 year old is dead, another young man is in critical condition and 10 others from the Bailar area are recovering from varying degrees of injury. Jacqueline Godwin visited this deeply troubled but close knit community today.

Sharett Smith, Mother of Deceased
“Well when I saw him, I said my son won’t make it. In the condition he was in, he wouldn’t have made it.”

Sixteen year old Darren Trapp suffered severe head concussion, facial injuries and massive wounds to his feet. Sharett Jones says she did not even recognize her own son at the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital.

Sharett Jones,
“They already had bandage over his jaw, they had a sheet across him, the thing on his hand, and they had like a thing in his mouth to pump it – to make him breathe. When I got in there I told them that wasn’t my son because it didn’t look like my son; the way how his face looked. He lost an eye and he lost a leg and the doctor said that three bullets were in his head and his skull, like it was coming through his eye – so they said he would definitely lose his eye. But one of his eyes was open and another shot when I saw him.”

Trapp had just returned from spending the day at the Agriculture and Trade Show with friends and was socializing at his usual spot on Mayflower Street when someone threw what they believe to be first a stone into the crowd.

Sharett Jones,
“I get to understand that when the thing was thrown, they asked who was stoning them and it looks like my son saw the thing, I guess the thing was letting go smoke or whatsoever, and he kicked it but when he kicked it, the same time he kicked it – the same time the thing exploded. So he is the one who got it the most. He always goes through, don’t matter how much I talk to him. I tell him through is not for him to hang out, he is too young, but no matter how you talk to him – he still goes. You can come out of the house and leave him home and by the time you come back home, he would just disappear and go about his business.”

Eleven other persons who range in age from fifteen to twenty nine years old received injuries to their legs, face, neck, hands, shoulders and abdomen. Neria Wolcock was the only woman who was injured with cuts to her jaw and breast. Wolcock told 7NEWS that she was walking away from the group but looked back when she heard someone curse and then she blacked out.

Jacqueline Godwin,
Norman I know when we spoke to you Sunday night you were very concerned about your both your sons’ conditions, Teddy and Ervin, how are both doing today?

Norman Reyes, Father Victims
“Ervin is doing fine so far. He has his stitch on where the bomb busted up in him but they didn’t get it that worst because they were behind. But I understand that a person came by the lane on a bicycle and throw the bomb. But the guys didn’t know it was a bomb, they thought it was a stone so they kicked it. When they kicked, it exploded and at the same time my son was just coming home.”

Jacqueline Godwin,
This is Teddy?

Norman Reyes,
“Yes he had just jumped on his bike to come home and at the same time, it blew him off his bike and knocked him in his chest and his foot and everything. The worst part of it is his chest where it bore into his chest close to his heart. So the doctor says he has a 50-50 to live but they will do their best to try and make him live. So the doctor showed me the x-ray and showed me that half of it is dark and half of it is clear. He said the half of it which is dark, that is the part that which could affect him, but they will do their best.”

Some eight hours after the explosion crime investigators returned to the bloody scene.

Jane Smith, Resident - Mayflower Street
“I do not know who threw it but all I know is that I sit here and I saw a fire up and just after that I heard the blast down and I just saw everyone running this side full of blood. So I run in and it looked like a lot of them had gotten shot, everybody was creeping come this side, everybody was just bust up. So as far as we know, it is not something that we see who did it or who didn’t do it.”

The south side explosion heard for blocks all the way even on the north side. But for those who lived nearby like long time Mayflower Street resident Jane Smith it is one experience she will not forget. Smith believes the victims and neighbours like herself did not know it was a grenade that exploded.

Jane Smith,
“I did not know. I didn’t know because all the guys were running and some of them were hollering that they got shot, they got shot. But looking at the crowd coming down, who were creeping out, everybody was bust up so you know it wasn’t a gun.”

Norman Reyes,
“Well I was at home when I heard the thing explode like a dynamite. So my girl told me to come out and see what happened at the front. So when I jumped out of my bed, I put on my clothes and I went out there, they say my son blow up, they said they threw grenade and it took three seconds before it blew up, the same time the young men attempted to leave.”

Major David Jones, BDF Bomb Squad
“The explosions inside does produce a shockwave and that shockwave was enough to just shake the houses a bit, cause it did shake one or two of the houses, it gave it a little rock and it goes back. But the damage from the grenade is actually from the pellets inside. Those pellets normally travel up to three hundred meters. Within a 100 meters, that type of grenade, the pellet, you will still get injured but not serious injury. Usually if you’re within 5 to 10 meter radius, you could be lethally injured.”

Jacqueline Godwin,
This is scary because a lot of people could have died.

Jane Smith,
“Lot of people, lotta people could have died because you have a guy who had just left to get a bike and ride come so from one of the same boys. Serious, but that is as far as we know; sit right here and watch that. You see it in movies but you don’t see it out like that.”

The blast also injured Jane Smiths’ nephew fifteen year old Sheriff Smith who remains in the KHMH.

Jane Smith,
“When I gone in the hospital they already had him on the bed and he had a lot of holes here, his two foot were full of holes and he just laid down right there. Then the next guy beside him, the next little boy, they said like he isn’t hearing out of his ears, he is not hearing, so he is tossing and tossing and everybody everybody – a bed for each.”

As Sharett Jones tries to cope with the tragic loss of her eldest son she knows Darren would still be alive if he had stayed inside the vehicle of a family friend that brought him from Belmopan but stopped at the friends’ residence in Belize City.

Sharett Jones,
“She said when she was reaching home, it was then she said somebody was missing out of the vehicle but it looked like she didn’t hear my son’s voice. When she asked where Darren was, they said Darren wasn’t in the vehicle. The young lady came to me and told me that she went there last night and told Darren not to go anywhere because she said her boyfriend went to buy chicken or something like to must be eat and she said she was going to go bathe and it looks like when she went into the bathroom, he came out and he look like he went. He went across to my cousin and he hollered for my cousin Ebony and Ebony wasn’t home. It looked like he had clothes there or slippers there and it looked like he changed and he went about his business. The young said that when she sent her boyfriend to look for him through Mayflower, by the time the boy reached – they told him that Darren was with the crowd in the explosion that happened.”

Now the families who are living in the aftermath are still reeling form this unprecedented act of violence:

Sharett Jones,
“I just to see justice done about it because too much things are happening in Belize. Innocent people are getting killed for no reason.”

Alfonso Noble,
Are you surprised that they threw a grenade into your neighbourhood?

Norman Reyes,
“Well the way I see it right, everybody got grenade, machine gun, and everything because all of us aren’t safe none at all now.”

While the family of twenty year old Teddy Reyes hopes for the best, we know that five of the injured have since been released. They have been identified as twenty nine year old Neria Wolcock, Twenty year old Ervin James, sixteen year olds: Kyle Chaplin, Tirston Gordon, and Kendis Flowers, and fifteen year old Tyron Meighan. The other persons who are still receiving treatment are: twenty five year old Darrel Myvette, eighteen year old Charles Young and sixteen year old Jamal Neal. This afternoon, CYDP activists held a meeting with the mothers of Bailar.