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It happened at the BDF Firing range off the Boom Road where a cache of grenades and heavy artillery were blown to bits. Inexplicably, no media house was invited, but the Government Press Office was and they provided us with this footage:..

Lt. Col. James Requena - Acting Chief of Staff, BDF "What we have here this morning is 12 - 40 mm rounds and 6 hand grenades that were recovered at different incidents in Belize City. The reason why we are destroying is because they are no longer of any interest to the court and we have gotten permission from the Belize Police Department to go ahead and destroy it rather than keep it in our arsenal."

Jules Vasquez reporting
A Justice of The Peace, senior police personnel and a senior magistrate were there to witness it.

These 40 mm rounds were the ones handed over to police in December of 2011 This grenade is the one picked up from KHMH in September of 2008 - when someone threw it at a crowd waiting to see the carnival.

This one was recovered, undetonated from Lake-I in May of 2011.

Lt. Col. James Requena - Acting Chief of Staff, BDF
"This grenade was found in St. Martin's De Porres area. This one was found at Karl Heusner Hospital during the carnival, this was thrown in front of Karl Heusner Hospital. These were retrieve by the police department by Mr. Broaster and these two were recovered from police training school in Belmopan."

All told these explosives could have taken dozens of lives and changed the history of Belize - particularly the Carnival one - but - through luck, and odd circumstance, they never detonated - and today a total of six grenades were prepared for destruction.

They were taken far afield at the BDF range to be detonated - the twelve 40 mm rounds were placed in a shallow trench the ground. The six grenades neatly stacked on top - and explosive charged were place don top of it.

Lt. Col. James Requena - Acting Chief of Staff, BDF
"These will be destroyed by adding explosive charge C-4 to it. It will be placed in a hole in the ground and we place the charge on top of it. Using electric means, we will set off the detonation. At the end we will go and inspect it to see that all have been destroyed."

For safety reasons the camera had to be moved a distance away - and when it came back - there was a massive crater - and everything had been blown to bits - only a few fragmented pieces of shrapnel remained.

We could not reach Requena to find out the source and type of all the Grenades.