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Samantha was talking on the phone when she was shot to the head. Initial reports were that the young woman may have been ambushed and targeted. Cherisse Halsall headed to Ordonez avenue this morning and attempted to learn more about the questions surrounding this merciless murder of a minor. Here is that story:

This was the scene on Friday night after 16-year-old Samantha Conorquie - known as Big Love - was murdered as she stepped out of a house on Ordonez Avenue.

The teenager had spent Christmas in the city.

Her mother was heading to Belmopan for the Holidays but allowed the 16-year-old to visit Belize city and stay with friends. Earlier today we spoke Samantha's friend off-camera:

Voice of: a friend
"She asked me to stay with me for the Christmas holiday, she knew me and my kids and she just wanted to spend that family time with us."

But instead, her children - one of them also a teenager witnessed a murder:

Voice of: a friend
"My house is like eggshells they don't want to use the bathroom alone, they don't want to do anything alone. This was someone who was there with us playing, laughing, dancing having fun enjoying life, it wasn't someone who was old and sick so to have someone with you that minute and walk out of the door and the door is closed and hearing gunshots and that person is outside dead, lifeless, it crushes your world."

But that world had already been shattered two years ago gunmen barged into the very same house killing the family's father and husband before their very eyes.

Now, another life has been lost and this time the victim was just visiting. But was Samantha Conorquie targeted? Or was her death related to the company she kept? Commissioner of Police Chester Williams alluded to involvement with dangerous company:

Chester Williams, Commissioner of Police
"There are some young girls who just love to associate themselves with persons that are known as a bad man. And sometimes the effect of that coming back to them could be very detrimental in terms of violence being perpetrated against them as well. And so selecting your friends and associates or who you date really and truly has a lot to do with it. And then parents of these young girls also need to be more involved in terms of knowing who their daughter is dating or who their daughter's friends are and see how they can offer advice where necessary."

Hopefully that advice can save someone, but Samantha's gone, and questions still linger:

Voice of: a friend
"A crime like this leaves us all in fear many people would ask a question what would could she have done? But the answer to that question is there is nothing anyone could do to be killed this cruel type of way no one deserves to die like this we all have mothers sisters family friends and we are living in a cold and cruel world."

"It changed my way I view life completely, I lost before but I never expected this in no way."

So while the killing of this 16 year old starts 2020 off on a very grim note, of note is that the last murder recorded in 2019, was also a teenaged female, 17-year-old Chanteuse Martinez.