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Elito Puc Met A Terrible End
posted (December 6, 2019)
Last night we told you that the decapitated body of a missing man had been found in the Adjacency zone on property belonging to Jorge Espat - the same property that's been in the news because Guatemalans are encroaching on it.

Elito had been missing since Thursday the 28th of November when he left his workplace at Silva's bus yard shortly before 7:00 in the evening reportedly to run errands in Melchor.

And while the Puc family say they want justice for their brother and son. The people of Benque may be hard-pressed to share that sentiment because Elito had a very troubled past.

We travelled to Succotz village today and spoke with Heraldo Puc, Elito's brother. He told us about this week's search for Elito and the sad, shocking conclusion:

Cherisse Halsall reporting
Another missing person's case ended yesterday with the recovery of yet another man killed in a vicious fashion. Elito Puc's brother says that the family attempted, at first, to deal with their brother's disappearance privately.

Heraldo Puc, Brother of Elito Puc
"All of us were informed by Friday. Well some of us were already working so you know how a family goes they try to deal with it first, and then try to see what they can do before informing everyone else. So starting on Friday some of my family members majority of them my elder brothers because we are a huge family they started mobilizing each other, the ones that were here trying to go to the last places where he was and try to find answers as to what is it that really did happen. Where did he go? Who did he go with and what is it that he went to do there."

"Approximately around midday my brother was informed via social media by a ground person from Guatemala saying hey we have just found a person here in Guatemala. First, it was the head that they found a head part but it was very unrecognizable it was already on active decomposition. So there was no way of actually trying to find out, you know, of identifying the identity that was first that was on Wednesday, Wednesday a head was found."

The family refused to believe that the skull found Wednesday in Melchor de Mencos could have possibly belonged to their brother. Yesterday, however, irrefutable evidence in the form of their brother's positively identified decapitated body forced them to accept that the skull, now in the custody of Guatemalan authorities, belonged to Elito.

Heraldo Puc, Brother of Elito Puc
"So then one of my brothers went to the Guatemalan side because what happened was a Guatemalan authority actually took the head part as part of their investigation because that was found on the Guatemalan side."

"They had requested some family members to go all the way to Flores Peten so that they can be able to initiate what they know as DNA testing. So that result is still pending and they still have that part."

"Yesterday, Thursday my brother was informed of the headless remains that was found on the adjacency zone. This changes things, because as we know the adjacency zone on the Belize side, we have jurisdiction over that. So the police can actually take over and we can actually go over there without having any issues, So my brothers went and they were able to identify the headless remains. You might be wondering how is it that we knew. There are specific characteristics that my brother had and by nature we know. I was at work when someone send me some pictures. I knew it was my brother then."

If Elito Puc's name seems familiar, you may remember him as the Mopan Tech teacher whose teaching license was pulled when it was discovered that he had been soliciting sexual favours from his male students by offering them bribes and lunch money. Since then he had been working as a watchman at Silva's Bus yard.

But despite his blighted professional record, today his family reminisced about Elito's resilience in the face of everything that his life had thrown at him.

Heraldo Puc, Brother of Elito Puc
"Elito, my brother he was 42 years old. He was already in a stage in his life where he had encountered so much hurdles in his life and one thing I will always remember about my brother was the resiliency that he had. He had so much hurdles and no matter what he encountered in his life he always found a way of bouncing back again. He had a strong passion in the agricultural sector. He has an associate degree from the central campus of UB in Agricultural Science. His passion was farming. You could ask anyone in the community. He knew anything about chickens, about poultry, cattle, plants, herbal medicine. As a community he was one of the strongest advocates for that. At one point he was actually the chairman of this village of San Jose Succotz."

The Puc family held a funeral for him at 2:00 this morning. His skull remains in the hands of Guatemalan authorities.

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