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Injured Tourist Says, “Don’t Let Down Your Guard”
posted (March 1, 2011)
Jon Berg, an American Tourist who was vacationing on Caye Caulker made the media rounds across Belize City to say that he was brutally assaulted on Caye Caulker.

Berg, who has travelled the world says he knows he broke the tourist safety rules, but also wants to send the word out that those rules do stringently apply - even on La Isla Carinosa:…

Jon Berg, terrorized tourist
"Taking pictures of the moon and the clouds and video movie with my camera here and all of a sudden I became aware of two men behind me, it was 11:05 in the night and it was very violent, all of a sudden they went like this (head lock) the classic mugging and I said to myself that it finally happened, I've been to 45 countries around the world and it finally happened. They went for my camera and my wallet but they didn't get any money or anything but the gentleman had his hand on my wrist and as I pulled away and yelled somehow I broke my wrist that way, both bones broken. The tourists are just totally unsuspecting there, they are like very naive. They think that it's not Belize City - everyone know Belize City you got to be careful, even Belizeans, but they don't expect that in Caye Caulker you have to be that careful. I was careless, I am an experienced international traveller, I've been to 45 countries around the world. My passport shows it and I was careless, I was taking pictures, focusing on the moon and the trees and I shouldn't have been doing that in the dark area, it was very dark at that time of night. I broke all the rules of international travel and that what allowed these two guys to take advantage of the situation and hurt me."

Jules Vasquez
"Why do you feel it necessary to come forward?"

Jon Berg, terrorized tourist
"Well people encourage me, people on Caye Caulker and I feel terrible about doing this in some ways because i am going to hurt people who are working hard to make a living. People saw me at the restaurant with the arm up like this and they are saying 'what happen to you?' and I say I was attacked and then almost always - it was funny - and they said 'by what?' and they think it's a cat or a dog, one person said a shark. Then when I said a human being, they almost couldn't believe it. They say here and they were like shocked because they don't believe that Caye Caulker is that kind of place. Obviously neither did I. Yes you have to be careful everywhere - I broke the rules."

Berg made a police report, and police did promptly detain two men, but they could not be charged because he could not make a positive identification.

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