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Two years ago, forty eight year old Amelia Johnston was viciously attacked by four armed men inside her store in Big Falls Village in the Toledo District. The wife and mother of two sons was severely beaten and received several stab wounds in her head, back and hands. After attacking her, the men locked up Amelia Johnston inside the building and left her to die in a pool of blood, unconscious on the floor. But Amelia did not die. After several hours she regained consciousness and called for help.

Police eventually arrested suspects and 7News understands that the case was scheduled to be heard sometime this week, but on Saturday night tragedy again struck the Johnston family and this time it would end in the loss of Amelia’s husband sixty four year old farmer Francis Johnston. Today we caught up with the grieving widow as she waited outside of the Belize City morgue.

Amelia Johnston says it was around seven that night and she, her husband and son were sitting outside of their residence and store when they decided to close the business for the day. But shortly walked into the store, they were attacked and by the time it was all over, Francis Johnston had been killed and his son seriously injured.

Amelia Johnston,
“We have a bench right in front of the house and me and my son and my husband got up and decided to close up the store. That was about seven o’clock and when I was loosing the door to close the door, my husband had already walked in and my son to start closing the windows and everything and I started loosing the door from the burglar bar where I had it hooked and close it, it has two halves.

When I was losing the first half I heard something like horses coming and then I said but what is running this time at night. When I turned my head and looked towards the road all I saw is three masked men running up straight to my building and one of them ran straight to me and held me. I was half inside and half outside and then the next one ran straight to my husband on him and the other one ran to my son and put the gun on my son and then when I saw that I think this other one already had me hold and didn’t have the time to, I don’t know if he had a firearm but me and him started to struggle and fight.

I got into a fight with him and I didn’t know where I got all the strength but I managed to escape, I got loosed from him and I ran to the dark, towards the neighbour and when I got through there I turned around and looked and they were all inside already and so I decided to run to my neighbour and see if they had a phone there to help me. They had a Smart phone and I told them to please dial 119 for me immediately and I got 119 and I started telling them what happened.

While I was on the phone I heard one gunshot went off. So I thought well someone got hurt. When I ran inside and what I saw, I saw my husband lying on the floor and he was bleeding so I knew my husband, I called him and he couldn’t talk to me anymore. He was just breathing and looking at me. I picked him up and hugged him and told him I will take him to the hospital. The vehicle had already reached and I told my son let’s take daddy out.

My son got hurt, they hit him behind his head and he had a wound, they burst his head to the back, they hit him out but the vapour of the bottle of the rum, the vapour, like the scent of the rum brought him back and he saw when the fellow shot his father.”

Amelia Johnston told 7News that she is upset because police failed to set up check points along the Jalacte road. Johnston’s stolen pickup was later found at the end of that road. She is equally upset that there was no body bag available at the hospital or police station and she had to quickly build a plywood box to transport her husbands’ body to Belize City for the post mortem. In June 2008, Francis Johnston became embroiled in a controversy over Mayan land rights versus property rights of an individual holder after he asserted rights over a piece property he had leased in golden stream village and had pushed off an encroaching Mayan farmer’s crops.

Punta Gorda police are investigating the deadly armed hold up from all angles but have still not been able to determine if the attack was somehow related to the previous assault on his wife, or possibly in relation to Francis Johnston’s public stance opposing Mayan land rights.