Email

Print

He is clinging to life and his family was bitterly angry when Monica Bodden met them today.

Alice Parks - Mother
"Miss I could tell plain now if I had a gun now and I know how to shoot I would shot him dead right here. That's all I got to say and I hope he is hearing this."

Monica Bodden, Reporting
Those are the words of this angry mother - still choked up with raw emotions - as she stood outside the Belize Healthcare Partners Limited.

Her youngest son - 25 year old Steve Parks - lies inside the Intensive Care Unit - with a bullet lodged behind his head - fighting for his life.

Pamela Beard - Sister
"He was at KHMH, they took him over there, they did a cat scan on him and they are saying that he has a 30% chance of surviving over there, so we decided to transfer him over this side and see what can happen for him here."

Ruth Gentle - Sister
"Dr, Cervantes spoke to me last night and he explains the CT scan and he told me that last night he never need to take a surgery because the bleeding was not excessive. But from last night to this morning the bleeding has gotten excessive and they need to do surgery to reduce the bleeding."

Parks had just left work - around 11 o'clock last night and was standing in front of Favorite's Restaurant on Mahogany Street. He was waiting for a fried chicken he had just ordered to take home. Today his family is still trying to put the pieces together:

Ruth Gentle - Sister
"All I need to say to the person that shoot my brother that he is coward because you don't shoot nobody from behind. If you are a man you shoot somebody in front of their face. According to what I hear the person ride by and shoot him in the back on head because his fry chicken went one side and he just slump over the bicycle."

Pamela Beard - Sister
"I understand that he knows who shot him, he was there talking to this person and then when they left he just fired the one bullet that cause my brother to be in this misery in here. It wasn't a robbery because I receive all his possessions last night."

Steven Parks is the father of a 5 year old little boy and an employee of the Belize Flour Mill. For his family - one of the many questions that comes to mind is- why would someone want to take his life?

Pamela Beard - Sister
"And we don't know him to be any kind of problem child or anything like that. I know lot of parents come here and they probably take up for their children but I can vouch for my brother; he is not one that is caught up in kind of gang rivalry or anything like that. He is from work to home; he lives for his son and his girlfriend."

Alice Parks - Mother
"Friday I spoke to him at his work. He was telling me about a problem there at work how they want to shift him to work in the night and that is the last thing I warn him about before I left from there; I told him don't accept that night work."

On April 26 of this year - Parks older brother - 33 year old Cecil Parks was shot in his left arm while walking on Berkley Street. Today he told us- he is positive that there are no connections between both shootings.

Cecil Parks - Brother
"No none at all. My shooting is completely something different it is a gang related incident that cause me to get shot. One area didn't like a different area so that area just target me as one of them but my little brother didn't do anybody nothing. A lot of people didn't know that he was my brother because of our different complexion, I would have to tell them, so in no way that is related."

This family is just one more added to the list of many - whose faith in the justice system is little to none.

Ruth Gentle - Sister
"It is so senseless because to just pick up a gun and shoot someone in back of their head and take their life for what reason, not even dog you see on the streets, people is not even killing dogs the way human beings are dropping in Belize. And the government is not doing anything about it. The people are crying and their crying is going unheard."

Monica Bodden
"You think you guys are going to get justice?"

Ruth Gentle - Sister
"I doubt it."

Monica Bodden
"You want justice?"

Alice Parks - Mother
"I would want to take it on my own."

Cecil Parks - Brother
"I just want to know who it is because I am not really afraid for those guys out there. I don't really give a damn about them, but they won't kill my little brother and get away just like that, I am telling everybody that I don't give a (curse word) about them. Straight up and I will walk around on the streets and I am not scared of any of them. I just want to know who did this to my litter brother so that I can do it back to them, I am not worrying about no government and no police and those simpleness. I am taking it for an eye for an eye. I just want them to know that."

Parks is in the operating theatre at this hour - and his family is asking the public to assist with blood because he needs 12 pints.