7 News Belize

Cops Roughed Up Their Teenaged Daughter In The Street
posted (September 26, 2019)

Last night a video of what seemed to be police brutality went viral on Belizean Social media - and in the process spawned dozens of memes.  

But beneath the making fun, there is a family that is hurting, angry and demanding answers about a child who's still in police custody - because she escaped from the youth hostel.   

As you've seen, the video shows 5 police officers attempting without success to restrain a half naked young woman in the street.  We now know she is only 15, but she fought the police - and the cops ended up using extreme measures to restrain her. Â  Her parents saw it and shared their horror with Cherisse Halsall today:

Her mother told us that they, like the rest of the country, were shocked to see this type of brutality inflicted upon their 15 year old daughter.

Esther Murillo - Mother
"We saw it on Facebook it looks like they found ____ around by the boat place and we don't know it looks like they started to beat up ____, choke her and all kinds of things, and they tore off her clothes and looks like they were trying to get her in the vehicle and she didn't want to go in. And then one of the big coloured police man he started to punch her in her mouth and then they punched her in her head, then one of the GSU came behind and put his hand behind her neck and started to choke up the little girl. The little girl is crying she's telling them that she feels hot she wanted to get her slippers they didn't want her to get he slippers. So they were holding her down from her waist not allowing her to go. And it looks like right there she's fighting them to try go, and right there they tore off her clothes, they had the little girl in just her brassiere, no panty no pants on naked naked, her whole butt turned toward the police, her whole private parts were showing. And then people passing watched, took pictures of the child and put it on Facebook."

Bruce Garbutt - Father
"This doesn't look right. Police they are so chancey they shouldn't do that. they wouldn't like somebody else come and brutalize one of their kids like that or nothing. That kind of way there I think they are wrong they are out of order right there with what they did yesterday and everybody wasn't happy with that yesterday."

Tonight the question on the public's mind remains; did the police really use justifiable force in detaining this young woman?

Cherise Halsall
"I'm hearing from eyewitnesses that if the female police had done her job correctly none of this would have happened."

Esther Murillo
"Yes, it would have been much better. They wouldn't have had to rough her up that way but She didn't even want to touch the little girl. She left it to the other four officers and it was them that roughed her up. And she was the only one out there and nobody was on her side to help her if those people hadn't been out there they would probably have beaten her to death."

"Now they will take her as a big woman and she's only 15 and they don't know what could have happened to that little girl, suppose they had burst her mouth and had her bleeding. I don't know what all happened and then now they are telling the little girl when they took her in the evening, they took her to jail saying that they would finish beating her up. Frightening her now they have her at Queen Street police station locked down."

The young woman remains in police custody and will likely end up back at the youth hostel from which she has escaped more than once. 

Now how did she get into the hostel?  Her father says they put her there because she was giving them a lot of problems while growing up.  They claim that the police are not actively trying to get girls back into custody once they escape - and they are the ones who have twice reported their child's whereabouts for her to be picked up and taken back into custody.  

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