7 News Belize

A Killer Lurked In His Yard
posted (March 4, 2019)
And going now to the city - where there has been another murder, and this one looks like a hit.

It happened between late Friday night and Saturday morning in the Port Loyola area. A gunman ambushed 45 year old Walter Beaton in his yard, shot him with a high calibre weapon and left him dead in the drain.

His wife told us today he knew he was being watched:

Daniel Ortiz reporting
48 year-old Walter Lindon Beaton was found dead in the drain in front of his house on Reggae Street. Someone shot him multiple times when he got home, a place that he should have been the safest.

We saw his vehicle parked in his yard, and there were shards of glass from his windshield littered around. It is uncertain at this time if the damage to the windshield happened sometime before, or it occurred during his murder.

One area resident found his body on Saturday morning, but did not know that he was was basically walking into a crime scene.

Voice of: Area Resident
"On Saturday morning, I got up [at] about 6, and I was about to go to the store. I passed the yard where he lives, and I saw his taxi outside. I saw the door open, and I saw the gate open. Walking pass, I saw him in the drain. So, I thought, mein, the guy is drunk, and I will assist him to get up out of the drain. Getting closer to pick him up, I saw the holes in his arm, and a hole in his back. I was then conscious that he was shot, but he wasn't moving. So, I stepped back, and I think I yelled for the daughter who lives in the residence with him. Nobody came out, and so I immediately called the police."

"Sir, it was a gruesome sight. From thinking that he was drunk to seeing that he was dead, that blew my whole morning."

His common-law wife told us that she was out with him the night before, and they spotted a suspicious vehicle following them around.

Voice of: Shakira Paulino - Common-law wife
"He picked me up from work, and when he picked me up, a vehicle was trailing us exactly from my work. We stopped at the police station in Belama. He said let us stop in the light because he was the one who saw the vehicle trailing us."

"And when we stopped there, the vehicle stayed behind us for about 5 minutes."

They thought they had given the person trialing them the slip, and so Beaton took her home. He then went to his house, and that's when he was ambushed by a gunman who lurked in the shadows.

Voice of: Shakira Paulino - Common-law wife
"He dropped me at Pelican [Street], about 15 minutes later, I saw the same vehicle turn the other way, to his direction, but it went to another street. When it went to another direction, about 15 minutes after, I heard so many shots, but I wasn't thinking it was him."

"When I reached there and I saw his body, it was shocking to me because Welch doesn't mess with anybody. He live at the back there, and he doesn't mess with anyone. If they would want a little tools, or 2-dollars, or he give them anything that they would want. So, I don't know why they would have wanted to take advantage of him. He's a man for his children; they chanced him."

He first made the news back in August of 2009, when he was charged with murder for the stabbing death of Leroy "Red Ants" Rhaburn, but less than 3 years later, he was acquitted and set free. His family acknowledges that he has had run-ins with the law, but that those were all a part of his past.

Voice of: Shakira Paulino - Common-law wife "He has his past, but regardless of that, he changed his life to try to deal with his his kids, to try to get them to go to school to time, and deal with his grandbaby. I don't know what reason they will want to try and hurt him."

Voice of: Area Resident
"This guy was a kind of person, he opened his gate, does his taxi runs, come right back home. That was the type of person I saw him as, a family man. He had his daughter there, and maybe a grand child, I believe. And that was it."

This family will now struggle financially because the main provider is no longer with them.

Voice of: Shakira Paulino - Common-law wife
"He is the breadwinner of his kids. He works all his taxi runs, any small hustling, he goes, and tries to do for his kids so that he could get them in school, with something in their hands."

"It's really hard for us right now. It's really hard because we weren't expecting that a loving man like him to die."

Beaton's family says that he leaves behind 6 children, but in court he has claimed as many as 8.

Our archives say that that he was convicted in November 2015 of drug trafficking for 50 pounds of marijuana, which was found in the back of a van. He was sentenced to 3 years' imprisonment and a fine of $10,000.

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