At ten minutes to midnight on Christmas, Belize City police got a call saying that a man was lying in a pool of blood in Battlefield Park.
It was 48 year old Clifford Stephen Jr - a homeless man - who lived in Battlefield Park - amongst the other homeless.
He was a homeless man, but for anyone familiar with downtown Belize City, he was well known as "Pecka"or "Tall Bwai" formerly a peanut vendor, most recently a street sweeper.
Police have not classified his death as foul play - they say it is a sudden death - because he reportedly suffered from seizures - and may have fell and hit his head.
But for one of the men who share the Battlefield Park with him, it was no accident:
Phil Estrada - Friend of "Pecka"
"They day before, he was sitting down there and he looked drunk. And from there, he moved and came up there, and we sat over there. We threw a bottle at dog, and the broken bottle parts nearly cut me. And it was right there that he came, tumbled down, and died. Somebody beat that man."
Reporter
"I understand that I man might have beaten him before he reached to the park."
Phil Estrada
"Before he got here, because when he came, he was weak, and he went and sit right there. They said that they saw blood over there, the police. That means that the blood from over there is his. Some little young boys likes to throw stones at that man. Anyway that they meet him, they tease him, or throw stones at him. That's the same thing that they do with 'cukoo' too. They throw stones at him and run. Sometimes they come on bike; sometimes they come walking, a whole crow of them. I feel like they stoned that man with some big stones or something."
And while that is his account, police - at this time - are not treating it as a homicide.
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