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COVID may be coming, but the killers are not relenting….

The peace of Belize’s City’s Sunday night was shattered by a double murder last night. It happened on the northside at the corner of 6th and Landivar streets, the residence of Shakira White and her extended family. 

The tragic incident has left one child a 5-year-old in a critical condition and another a 3-year-old shot to the knees. 

Cherisse Halsall was on the murder scene this morning and she found out that you couldn’t have met a nicer more hard-working couple that Phillip and Shakira.

At 9:45 last night, Shakira White and Phillip Leslie along with her children were at home. They were in the bedroom winding down the weekend with some family time but that was when tragedy struck.

Little did the couple know that a gunman had approached their bedroom window.

Shakira’s aunt was upstairs when the shots rang out. She remains terrified for her safety and that of the others in the home but she stood strong.

Her blouse still covered in droplets of her grand niece’s blood, and she told us that Shakira sacrificed her life for her children.

Voice of Shakira White’s Aunt
"Well last night I heard ten shots. I was upstairs, I was around my table eating. The only thing I could have done quickly was just grab my children and put them on the ground. My neighbors they went inside and tried to assist. Approaching inside my niece’s gentleman was on the ground. She was on the ground and her two kids on the bed apparently the gentleman was already dead and then my niece got multiple shots, she was unconscious, my niece and my nephew were crying and they just stopped crying. My nephew, a little four year old, got shot. He lost consciousness. The police and neighbors had to break the wall to take my niece out and put her into the mobile. And then they took out Dominique and put him in the mobile and rushed them. Dominique left unconscious Shakira opened her eye a little and then from there the mobile took her to the hospital."

"I believe that Shakira held the baby and sheltered the baby and she received all the bullets and she tried her best to shelter two of them but the baby only received one. So, Shakira took seventeen bullets so that means that she sheltered her children and received all. She would do anything for those kids and last night proved it that she, a mother will hold her children and receive 17 bullets just to make sure that they were okay and she has always said that: “ me I will die for my children.â€￾, and last night showed us that. She meant what she said because she received seventeen and died. Mr Phillip received twenty bullets and Dominique received four."

Dominic is five years old, this morning he underwent what is hopefully life-saving surgery. He remains critical and has been given a 50% chance of survival. His Grandmother mourns for his mother while praying for him.

Jennifer Blease - Shakira’s mother
"Then my grandson Dominique they say he is 50/50 percent, you know, so they say we have to wait and see the outcome and pray and ask God, you know for strength and Dominique is so smart, you understand, he knows colors, preschool, you understand, Granny you know I do this, Granny I do this, and granny I do that, you understand, so all I can do is pray for Dominique."

And Dominique's sister 3-year-old Dasha sustained bullet wounds of her own.

Voice of Shakira White’s Aunt
"Everything happened so quick, last night it was just a little blood stain and then she slept throughout the whole night with no complaining of pain. And then this morning when we decided to wash the blood we saw it and then they decided to take her to the hospital but she is not complaining of pain she is not saying this is hurting me, nothing."

Jennifer Blease is recovering from a stroke. She says it’s been a difficult recovery and one that her daughter Shakira nursed her through. This morning she told me that she’d often wondered how and why she survived. But she can see now that life had another task for her as the guardian to her grandchildren, now left orphaned by their mother and step-father’s death

Jennifer Blease
"I’m not that 100% because I had a stroke but I have to ask god to give me strength you know so that I can be there for Dasha because my, her baby is only three, you understand, they took Shakira with a baby that’s only three years old and Dominique, I have 5 grand-children in that house, you understand, she, her two, my next daughter’s two and my son had one. Five small children what could that person have in his mind to shoot up that house. He doesn’t have a heart, you understand, he took my daughter Shakira. All my children are my pride and joy but my first child, you understand."