Belize City Mother Demands Police to ‘Leave Family Alone’

A Belize City mother is calling on police to stop targeting her family after Tuesday night’s shooting on M & J Street in the Lake Independence area. Three people were injured when a gunman opened fire. The victims were two seventeen-year-old boys and a sixty-year-old woman. Two have been released from hospital. One remains admitted.

Joyce Martinez, the mother of one of the injured teens, told News 5 today that the ordeal has left her family terrified and frustrated. She said police blocked her from seeing her son at the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital.

“They neva want I go in to see my son who just get shot,” she said. She claimed an officer “gone for a bat” and that she feared she would be harmed. “I don’t know if they mih want wap up me or what because I start go on rash now, because I need to know weh di go on inside.”

Martinez said officers have continued to visit and search her home, claiming that “every shooting that happen, no care da weh paat in the district, they come da my house.”

She said the family is cooperating but wants the police to focus on identifying the gunman.

The shooting happened just after 7:30 near La Croix Boulevard. Police, BDF and GI3 officers have since increased patrols in the area.