Dangriga residents woke up this morning to the news of a body floating in their river. For one family, they quickly realized it was the body of their missing relative. 35 year old Guillermo Martinez was apparently targeted a day after he was released from prison.
At first, the community wasn't sure what caused his death. But signs of gruesome injuries on the body suggest that he may have been killed.
Courtney Menzies traveled down south to learn more. Here is that story.
On November 7th, the family of 35 year old Guillermo Martinez filed a missing report for him. At that point, it had been 5 days since he was last seen.
But while they held out hope that he would return, this morning, his body was found floating between these two docked boats in the southeast riverside area. The body was already in an advanced state of decomposition.
One fish vendor, who operates a few feet away from where Martinez was found, said that his family feared for a second that it might have been him.
Carlos Palacio, Fish Vendor
"I was still in my bed this morning when I heard a call from outside of the yard. I recalled it was my mother's voice calling for my common law and she asked her if I'm around because they just found a body in the river. So she replied to her and told her, yes, he's right here. So that's what made me jump out of my bed and decided to start my day and I came out here, when I saw a pile of police men already had their sign, no entry, because there is an incident. So I stood there a little while before they decided to haul the body out of the water and after they picked the body out of the water, they put it in the truck."
Palacio explained that he knew Martinez in passing, but though he did not really interact with him, he could tell that Martinez was mentally ill.
Carlos Palacio, Fish Vendor
"It was very hard on, most of all, his family, because he wasn't a young man to say that he messed with people, go around and do things out of the way, but he wasn't too "hundred" either. Sometimes he would trip out, sometimes he would go away from himself. I hope nobody had to do with his death. Who knows, because of his situation, he could have just jumped off the bridge."
"It's so sad to hear another youth went down that way, the way he went down. But I don't have any clue that somebody would have done him that."
But the police's initial investigation has revealed that Martinez was found with his left arm severed at the elbow and three apparent bullet holes in his right. foot.
And Palacio added that while he doesn't know if Martinez frequented that area at night, during the day he would pace back and forth on the bridge.
Carlos Palacio, Fish Vendor
"He's not a person that interacts with people much. Time to time, this is like his playground because the family was living on St Vincent Street, recently moved to Penn Road. So to be real with you, I haven't seen him for a while. He would be up and down sometimes. Because of the, you know, when you're short of patience that he has, sometimes you would always see him right around here, walking from the middle of the bridge back to the corner of the bridge, back to the middle of the bridge, ten times, twenty times."
And the reason Palacio hadn't seen Martinez recently is because he was doing a stint in prison. In fact, he was just released on November 1st. The next day, he went to the store, and never returned home.
One of Martinez's relative told us off camera that he wasn't really surprised to learned that he was murdered, since he had been accused of criminal activity in the past. And Palacio told us that it wasn't so shocking for him either.
Carlos Palacio, Fish Vendor
"Incidents like that would give you a state of mind to think but because of who he was and what he was going through, it wasn't really a surprise to know a person could just go down that type of way."
Back in 2009, Martinez was charged with the decapitation and dismemberment murder of a Honduran man resident in Dangriga Town. In 2014, however, he and two other men were found not guilty of the crime.
Martinez had no children.
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