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52-Year old Micheal Barrera was picking up food from Bravo's shop on Central American Boulevard and chatting with someone. That, someone, was being targeted by a gunman. He spotted the threat and immediately ran away but Barrera wasn't so lucky. The target escaped reportedly by jumping on to a city bus. That's when the gunman in anger reportedly turned to point the gun at Barrera, firing a fatal shot. Here is that story.

Crime scene tape on a crowded street at the height of rush house - it's become an all too familiar scene that plays out once again on Central American Boulevard in the moments after 52-year-old Micheal Barrera was shot and killed.

A crowd of onlookers gradually gathered to observe first responders attempt to control the area around his motionless body- which can be seen here covered with cardboard.

This afternoon we spoke to Barerra's cousin Grace Flowers. Flowers was one of the last in the family to see Micheal alive.

Grace Flowers, Cousin of the deceased
"He was in my yard. We were discussing our dogs. He wanted his dog to mate with my dog and I told him no. We made fun of it and he left, about half an hour later we got the news that someone got shot. I couldn't believe it was him until we confirmed it but he wasn't the intended target. He was at the Chiney purchasing some food and the gunman chased his target, he got away, that's when the gunman swung around and just but the gun on him and shot him in his back."

"His mom is very devastated because she lost a son, her youngest son, in this same situation in which they are not gang bangers."

"If he was a problem person then but he is not a problem person so it will be hard on his mom and his family."

Indeed Micheal was anything but a problem, until very lately he'd been A counselor with CYDP working to save at risk youths from the streets. Marnette Westby is his former supervisor, she was one of three people called to that fateful scene yesterday and charged with identifying his body. She shared some of the impact Barrera was able to have through CYDP's community outreach.

Marnette Westby, Conscious Youth Development Program
"I knew Mr. Barrera from the days of working at the prison, he and I worked at the prison together and he later on came, we worked together again when he came to work here at CYDP."

"He wanted to make a difference and so he has worked with many youth groups. He has worked for many years with troubled youths not only at the prison not only here at CYDP but he was always involved from way back when they were trying to curb the situation. Barrera was one of the names there."

"Mr. Barrera's story was, I can help that person because of where I have been. He said you know to live the fast life in America and changing my life and surviving it and coming here if they hear my story if they see that I can rise above it I believe my story can help them. It was always about sharing his story and trying to help and going the extra mile. That was what it was all about for him."

"His thing was always, mein, if they bally could only take a page out of my book and realize that none of this makes sense. I survived it and if they don't stop if we don't stop. They won't survive it and I would like to see all of them survive it."

But Micheal was on a break from working, a break his family wishes he'd never taken. And they took the opportunity to clear up details that they felt certain media houses had misrepresented during preliminary reports.

Grace Flowers, Cousin of the deceased
"He worked along with CYDP until the time of his death but I guess he was waiting to renew his contract and I think if he was still working he wouldn't have been in that morgue where he is right now."

"Micheal spent most of his life in the US. He had a family over there. He left four kids behind. He has grandkids out there. He came home and he started a new family where he has three other kids this side. He was a nice person everybody loved him for what he did. He tried to help everyone. So it's unfair how they just took his life."

And the family says that while Micheal did fall in with the wrong crowd in the U.S., even doing a stint in prison, he was never a gang banger. Ultimately he used negative experiences he may have had abroad to fuel the change he hoped to provoke in the streets of Belize City, never believing that he would fail to survive those streets.

Micheal Barrera leaves behind seven children, a mother, two other brothers, and a sister.