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Jules Vasquez, Brother of Deceased
"My brother died at 9:40 on Saturday night. He died of brain trauma. He was beaten mercilessly to his head. His face was crushed and a post mortem this morning found that he died of blunt force trauma. Eventually, he had no injuries below the neck; it was all concentrated on his head which was literally disassembled. He had been mauled which is the word that I had used. And the post-mortem was conducted today and what happened is that eventually his brain could just not tell his organs to work anymore. His lungs shutdown and his heart shutdown. They had him on ventilator. I had to only say the best of the staff at ICU, they work with extraordinary precision and perseverance to keep my brother alive. But in the end it failed. So that's the first thing I want to say, the circumstances of his death. The second thing is the sequence of events that brought his here on that very unfortunate Thursday afternoon. My brother had been having an acute episode, he is mentally ill and has been having an acute episode for about a week and he displayed certain behavior that wasn't safe for our family and I had to ask the police to detain him on Monday because, regrettably, detention is the only way many mentally ill people can access the care they need to calm them down. And that's what he got on Monday; they took him to the Port Loyola clinic where Nurse Elijio treated him. On Tuesday, Nurse Elijio would become a victim of the person who eventually gave the injuries that killed my brother. But the police then illegally kept him in custody. We agreed that they would keep him until Tuesday morning without charge. They then illegally kept him in custody for sixty-five hours without charge and released him on Thursday morning at which point they came to my office and again displayed behavior that it was not for the safety of everyone there. We felt that it wasn't optimal for safety and I again had to ask police to come and pick him up for the same reason because being mentally ill in this country one cannot directly access the sort of compassionate care that is needed in that situation."

"They took him to precinct one and then they brought him here to precinct three. they brought him here at 11:32am thereabout, and he was taken into custody and he was put initially in the juvenile cell was a break of protocol. From the surveillance video we have seen, he seemed to be calm in there, but the officers on duty reported that he came under threat in there. So then at 12:20 the officers on duty made a critical, critical error that cost my brother his life; the put him in the same cell with Mr. Collin Francis who was awaiting charges for attempting murder for Nurse Elijio. The first thing Mr. Francis should not have been in that cell, because he should have been taken to the court from that morning and if not he should have gone in prison bus at 1pm. So he should not have been in there when they put my brother in there at 2pm. When they put him in there at 2pm, he resisted, because they were taking him out of cell with juveniles and putting him into a cell. He didn't know the person, but you can see on the video that they are pushing him in the cell and he is resisting. Regretably, they put him in that cell and shortly thereafter we, don't know the exact timeframe, because there is no camera in the cell, just a camera in the corridor. The 28-year-old Mr. Francis who seemed to be going through a psychotic episode and I say that based on his actions with Nurse Elijio, mercilessly beat my brother, a 60-year-old man, very physically fit and a strong man, but a man who have just come off of 65 hours of detention and a man who also had a very big gash on his head. We know don't how he got it. It may have happened in the custody of police, which has to also be investigated and he was mercilessly beaten in that cell. A very large swath of blood. They then bungled, serial errors, they moved with no urgency towards the cell where they had been notified that, just voices in the cell, "Fight! Fight!" That kind of thing. They responded with complete, in a blase manner, just lasing into the thing like "wow, weh di go on." No urgency to save a dying man's life. He was removed from the cell, limbs flailing, unconscious but bleeding, bludgeoned and he was then, without stretcher, put into a police mobile, no driver for that mobile. Change him from that mobile to another mobile, time is being lost, blood is being lost. He is dying and they then took him to KHMH."

"So there were multiple breakdowns, but the most egregious is that the police, the officers on duty who have been named were on interdiction, under criminally and disciplinary investigation. They failed so thoroughly in their duty of care. They put my brother who they knew, because I had spoken to the duty officer, was having a n acute episode that week, that he was mentally ill. They put him in a cell with a man who had just displayed a psychotic binge on Nurse Elijio. They put him in there to be killed and he's dead."

Jules also spoke on the issue of mental illness and how the death of his brother underscores how unequipped the authorities are to address these sensitive cases.

Jules Vasquez, Brother of Deceased
"Being seriously mentally ill in this country can be a death sentence and that's why we are here today, because the police have admitted culpability and liability. We could just take a settlement and that be in the end of it and that's the third point I want to make that we are here to auger for a cultural change and a structural change in how mentally ill people can access care and are treated and handled when they are in these situations. I agree the police are completely unfit. The Commissioner gave an undertaking in there that he will create a padded cell for mental patients, for people that are showing these tendencies. If they had that, my brother probably wouldn't be dead. We don't know what happened in that cell that gave him these horrific head injuries, but hopefully with a padded cell this would not happen."

Reporter
"Do you believe that this is a situation of: we know how it is "we gat 2 crazy man, let's put them together and see what happens.""

Jules Vasquez, Brother of Deceased
"I believe it's a deliberate act. We don't have the audio, because the cameras don't pick up audio, but I do think that maybe he was giving the officers a little battery, in terms of I did see him when he was in the property room, he did grab his shoe lace that they had to take off his shoe lace - he grabbed it off the desk and then the officer grabbed it from him. He was talking non-stop. We don't know what he was saying. Maybe he was praying. He tends to do that, but we know that the officers put a man in there when Mr. Collin Francis was in that cell alone and he was in there alone for a reason and then pushed my brother in there. He resisted twice and they pushed him in there. There were other cells available. They pushed him in there I believe. I do believe that their motives (police) was 'oh you wah play crazy, go play crazy with he.' He is psychotic (Francis) and we know what happened next. They failed in their duty of care. They put my brother deliberately I believe in harm's way. The Commissioner has assured us full transparency and had given us I believe unprecedented transparency, but that cannot be the end of it. It cannot be about my brother, for our family, the critical thing is that my brother death cannot have been in vain. He cannot have suffered this excruciating end for no reason. There must be alternatives to the access treatment, to the care and management of mentally ill persons, because for them to end up here is symptomatic of how badly broken our system is and at the end of the day it's a terrible cliche, but its terrible true. How we treat the least of us is indicative of the best of us, so we have to raise the levels and standard and expectation of care for mentally ill persons."

Jules Vasquez also had a few touching words to say about his brother who will surely be missed.

Jules Vasquez
"I'm certain there was only one Nestor Vasquez Jr. in Belize. He was unlike anyone else and he was - anyone who knows him can say that he is one of the most unforgettable persons in this society. He was, in many ways a daring person, often times too much so. He was famous for jumping bridges, motorcycle stunts - all sorts of activities that can't be documented. I've seen him jump off a 12 foot veranda at Channel 7 to pursue someone who had done a wrong against his family. And that's what I want to get to. My brother it pains me that my brother was killed when he was defenceless for whatever reason. It pains me because he is a protector and my brother has always sought to protect all of us as best he could and at all times whenever he felt that we were under threat and he died without protection. It's indicative of the culture of how we treat mental illness and how we have to deal with these cases that I had to call police that morning and these things stay with us, but he will be remembered as a warrior, a spirit warrior, as a fighter and as a prisoner, but someone whose only cry was for freedom."

We here are Channel 7 news express our deepest condolences to Jules Vasquez and his family for this tragic loss.