And while the death o=f two teenagers and multiple gunshots to an older man are all terrible, regrettably, they aren't anything too unusual. But our next crime story is: Just after midnight on Saturday, a man walked into the Belama Substation and opened fire on the lone police man assigned to the station, 23 year old PC Nigel White.
The young constable was shot to the center of his chest, and collapsed at the door of the substation. The gunman then proceeded to rob him of his service revolver and run off to the Belama Phase Two area with two other men.
Turns out the policemen was shot with a prohibited weapon, a 40 caliber pistol - which is a very deadly handgun, and tonight the constable is in a critical but stable condition.
It is a completely unprecedented event - and the signals it sends cannot be overstated: this is the most brazen assault we have ever seen on a police building and personnel; it is an act of lawlessness almost beyond recognition.
But it is also a crime of opportunity; the officer was left alone in the station - which in the current crime climate is ill-advised.
Today police press officer Fitzroy Yearwood discussed the crime:…
Fitzroy Yearwood, Police Press Officer
"It's a real unfortunate situation and one to the extent it has angered every law abiding citizen in Belize, not only the police department. When you have a police officer who is on duty and the criminal elements of our society has absolutely no respect for any authority and they will enter a police station to disarm a police to what probably to commit another crime because obviously they went after his weapon and its unfortunate PC White was on duty on the early hours of Sunday a little after 12 am when three men entered the police station and fired a single shot that caught him in the chest area. I must say that we are lucky today as a department that he is still alive - thank God for that and we know that he is listed in a serious but stable condition. As far as the investigation goes we have every available personnel on the streets trying to gather information and we are asking the public if they know anything that they believe can assist us to please come forward and help us."
Monica Bodden
"Now there has been a spree of shootings over the weekend. Have anybody been detained?"
Fitzroy Yearwood, Police Press Officer
"Well Monica to comment on detention of persons we will continue to detain people until we get to the orchestrators of these crimes. We have question several persons and in this shooting in particular we are still looking for three persons."
One 40 caliber slug was retrieved from the crime scene and police immediately detained two men, one of them an 18 year old from the Belama area.
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