Tonight, an 18-month-old baby is without both his parents after his mother was found in a pool of blood and his father was detained. The child was at home in Willows Bank with 30-year-old Margaret Cleland, but when his father, 52-year-old Emeterio Reyes got home last night, he immediately realized something was wrong. But was Reyes responsible for his wife's death, or did someone else murder a mother in cold blood in front of her son? Courtney Menzies was on the scene today and has this story.
The blood splatters around this home in Willows Bank tell a tale that one normally only sees in movies. It starts here, with dried blood on the door of the small zinc building, and trails over to this outside bathing area, where a bucket of blood-tinted water stood, a single article of clothing floating. The trail ends here, all the way across the road, in these bushes, where the body of 30-year-old Margaret Cleland was found with injuries to the back of her head.
But when her husband, 52-year-old Emeterio Reyes got home, he says he couldn't find her at first, just his one and a half year old son standing in this pond, crying out for him, and unable to get out.
Today, a neighbor told us how they discovered Cleland.
Voice of: Neighbor
"Last night, the man came off the bus around 6:25, he went across to his house and said his baby was calling for him so he went and noticed the baby was in water. So when he looked around for the mother, the mother was nowhere to be found. So he picked up the baby and he came to my house crying because he wants to know what happened to the mother and the baby was left in the water, because he thought she was bathing the baby but the mother was nowhere to be found. So he came to my house crying so after a while I said let's go across and look around. so I came across with the phone light because they have no electricity. when we get by the front door, I noticed an amount of blood by the door. So he went and showed us the hole that the baby was but we noticed blood was dripping from the door to the pool that the baby was in. So after that I told them let's go on the road cause we have to call police. So we came on the road and the next young man who was with us saw the young lady right on the side of the road lying face down."
And there's no clear reason why this family was targeted since they hadn't even been living there a year yet.
But one clue may come from these cryptic Facebook posts made three days ago on an account seemingly belonging to the murder victim. In one post she says, "I know what happened, my people know too, they will kill me soon too." And another reads, "He killed them and put his nephew in jail because of the big man, please take care of my kids."
These posts led many in the public to believe she may have been a witness in a murder, and was killed for that reason. But today, the Commissioner of Police made his own post saying, quote, "I can confirm the victim is neither a witness and she had not provided any information to the police regarding any criminal activity… I can also confirm that the content of those comments were only brought to our attention this morning and we cannot at this time confirm if they were indeed made by her." End quote.
And their presence int he area is equally mysterious:
Voice of: Neighbor
"They've been up here for a couple of months so only for a couple months I've known them but not to hang out, we didn't have any hang out kind of business like that, those kinds of ways."
"Honestly… it's still kind of shocking to see what went on cause we've never had something like this around here so I don't know what to say, all I know is what I saw last night when the man came to call me, crying, and we came across here and we came back out on the road and discovered the lady."
Now the residents of Willows Bank are worried for their own safety:
Voice of: Neighbor
"It's concerning because like I showed you, see how far i live and this is close to my home, so it's concerning."
So far, police have detained Reyes, while the baby was handed over to Human Services.
Cleland is originally from Belize City, where her family still resides. We will be following this story.
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