Another Murder; One Mother Faces Unthinkable Loss This Mother’s Day

As families across Belize City get ready with flowers, hugs, and Sunday plans, one mother is bracing for something very different, another Mother’s Day marked by heartbreak. Helen Samuels won’t be celebrating. Instead, she’s mourning. Her twenty-nine-year-old son was gunned down in a brazen attack in the CET Site area, leaving Samuels to grapple with a loss no parent is ever prepared for. It’s the kind of grief that doesn’t pause for holidays, and this weekend, it feels especially heavy. While others plan tributes to their mothers, Samuels is remembering her child and facing the painful silence his absence has left behind. For her, Mother’s Day won’t be about celebration. It will be about survival. News Five’s Paul Lopez tells her story.

 

Helen Samuels, Mother of Deceased

“I struggle in life and every struggle I go through in life makes me stronger, suh what they do to me and feel like they make me discouraged and bring me down, I tell them, I have news for them.”

 

Helen Samuels has spent a lifetime holding things together. The CET Site resident has weathered her share of struggles, carving out a life for her children in a modest wooden house that tells its own story. It may not stand out to passersby, but to Samuels, it represents years of sacrifice, determination, and love, a place she built piece by piece to keep her family safe. Behind its worn boards is where she raised her children, did without so they wouldn’t have to, and created a sense of home in the face of constant challenges.

 

Helen Samuels

“Everybody mih live in here. This is the roots of everything here. If the house could talk it talk. I get wet up in here. Rain thunder, lighting come, hurricane come.”

 

That is until she received a starter home from the Government of Belize. But even those concrete walls cannot contain the grief that she is experiencing tonight, as she faces one of her most difficult life challenges to date.

 

Helen Samuels

“In all I have four sons. My oldest son died at nine months. Then they come and kill my son when he was twenty-nine, that was the oldest one. Then they come and kill this one, the oldest that was alive, twenty-nine.”

 

Tonight, Helen Samuels is mourning her twenty-nine-year-old son, Jamal. On Thursday evening, he stepped out of his CET Site home to make a quick purchase nearby. While there, gunmen showed up and opened fire, fatally wounding him. His sister was among the last family members he spoke to.

 

Sherean Tracy, Sister of Deceased

“I just hear the gunshot, and I never know dah my breda the take deh amount of gunshots. I never know. And dah like, they meant to kill him, they meant to kill him. It’s like they had no mercy, no heart on my brother.”

 

Helen Samuels

“He nuh heng. He is not a person that hangs. He will roll up his weed and sit down in front of his yard and smoke and drink. Most of the time he will find that in the yard right there sitting down. He nuh heng and nuh have a lot of company either, he hang by himself.”

 

His family believes that the shooters opened fire indiscriminately and that he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. So, was he the intended target?

 

ASP Stacy Smith, Staff Officer

“It is not clear however we suspect that this incident is as a consequence of the internal rift that exist in the Backaland area. I will also say that Mr. Samuels was known to police having been charged just last year for drug trafficking.”

 

Helen Samuels says her greatest regret as a mother was her inability to move her children out of Belize City to live elsewhere.

 

Helen Samuels

“I wish I could have lived out of Belize with my two sons. I wish I could move, because only one son I have now. I don’t know how I will get through this, because this bring back all memories of my first son.”

 

Helen Samuels says authorities detained her only living son following Thursday night’s incident. Reporting for News Five, I am Paul Lopez.

 

Helen Samuels says authorities detained her only living son following Thursday night’s incident.

 

Attention readers: This online newscast is a direct transcript of our evening television broadcast. When speakers use Kriol, we have carefully rendered their words using a standard spelling system.

 

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