7 News Belize

A Daylight Killing On The Alberts
posted (April 4, 2012)
Tonight another Belize City family is grieving after a 23 year old man was killed this afternoon on Albert Street. It happened in front of Dee Dees just a block and a half away from our studio.

Michael Garbutt was shot fatally in the head as he walked down Albert Street.

Our camera got there just minutes after it happened, at the same time his family arrived - it was a devastating scene of loss and the singular grief that gun violence has brought to our community.

Daniel Ortiz was there:..

Jules Vasquez reporting
When we arrived in front of Dee-Dee's restaurant three minutes after it happened, the scene was charged.

Michael Garbutt lay on the sidewalk dead - his body collapsed near a concrete garbage bin, his brains spilled out onto the street - right below his family's home.

And so, his family almost saw it happen - and they were the first there - wailing around him - trying somehow to bring him back - but he was dead by a shot to the head.

He was visiting family at the home and waiting to go somewhere else with them, when a shooter came out of nearby Simmons Alley and fired three shots; one hit him in the side of the head.

Bystanders from the pedestrian traffic on Albert street could not resist. They had to peer at the sudden spectacle of death -a killing that had unfolded right in the middle of a busy day on the city's main street. His family couldn't even see those bystanders - they were enveloped in grief. As police rushed to bring order to the scene, this woman had to be carried away, and someone from a nearby house threw a sheet to allow them to cover the body.

Family members had to be braced, their reaction a mixture of rage and total grief. The ambulance wasn't needed - because he was already dead.

And even when they were removed from the scene, his family still had to witness the spectacle - because his body was on the ground right below their verandah.

About twenty minutes after processing the scene, police picked him up and drove the body away - one more shocking murder for this numbed city.

And one unrecoverable loss for this stunned family.

So far, police have no one detained. Multiple reports say the shooter dashed back down Simmons Alley.

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