7 News Belize

Working Man Killed In "Ghost Town"
posted (May 28, 2012)
There were three murders countrywide this weekend and three shootings as well.

We start in the city where two men were killed - one figure with enemies in the underworld, and another, a working man - with no street history.

We begin with the working man - Eldon Lewis who was killed last night on Mayflower Street. Mayflower has been in the news many, many times before the base for the Ghost Town gang. Except, 37 year old Lewis was not in any gang - he was in the area to buy a one dollar weed. But something went very wrong - and he ended up riddled with bullets.

7news was on the scene last night - and here's the story:..

Jules Vasquez reporting
When we arrived on the scene, police had moved the body from where it was found under a house unto the street - another body headed form Mayflower Street to the morgue.

The playful nature of the children just feet away from a dead man show just how accustomed they have become to this kind of violence in their neighborhood.

And while these youths have had to become accustomed to violence in a community that is exploding in their midst -the deceased Eldon Lewis had his own three month old child at home this is the last thing his wife could have expected when he left home last night.

Today she stood alone outside the KHMH back entrance - she had just been to the morgue to see her dead husband:

Tanya Bowen, Wife of Deceased
"I just find out this morning like after minutes to seven, I notice that he didn't come home last night. I got up to see where he was because he is not the type of person that sleeps out. Before I reach the shop to buy a phone card to call him, Mrs. Finnegan called me and asks me if I heard that Eldon got shot."

She said he had left home to go to his usual hangout at Mayflower street.

Tanya Bowen, Wife of Deceased
"After 4 or 5 he came to ask me for one dollar, he says that he is going to buy something and come back. He never did come back."

And at about 7:30 he was shot on the verandah of a house on Mayflower Street. It was a merciless deliberate act: he was shot 8 times to the abdomen, three time to the chest and twice to the head. Police say Lewis was sitting on a bench when a man walked up to him and opened fire.

His wife said the Belize Waste Control employee was not a trouble man

Tanya Bowen, Wife of Deceased
"I still can't believe that somebody would want to kill him and for what? What did he do? Nothing. He is not a trouble person. He comes from work and go to smoke his weed and come back and he would stay home with his baby."

And that's what the 37 year old went to do last night - smoke a weed with a friend in Mayflower:

Jules Vasquez
"What was his business in Mayflower last night?"

Tanya Bowen, Wife of Deceased
"As I told you when he came yesterday evening after eating, he told me to give him a dollar that was on the TV stand and he says that he was going to buy a weed and was coming back. It was around there he went."

No one knows what events led to his death an hour later - all this mother knows is that her son will have to grow up without a father - after this couple had been on the run from violence that ended up catching up to them with decisive finality

Tanya Bowen, Wife of Deceased
"We use to live in the Yabra area and when the gun violence started, I told him that this is not a place for us. We move from there the following morning they started to shooting there."

"None of us were working at that moment. Due to Mrs. Finnegan, when I joined the apprentice program, I ended up with a job and he ended up getting a job at Waste Control. Now my baby has to suffer, I grew up without a dad and I didn't want that for my baby. That really hurts; I didn't expect something like that to happen. My baby is just three months old. Now I have to raise my baby by myself because of those worthless people out there. I didn't expect to go through something like this. It is hard for me. We just got on our feet, we are trying, we lived a righteous life. But God is not sleeping. The person who did that, I just pray that God have mercy on him."

Lewis was the father of 5 children - four from previous relationships. He had been working at Belize Waste Control for a year.

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