7 News Belize

Were Men Shot Because They Are "Spanish"?
posted (January 3, 2013)
Valle was shot seven minutes before Orlando Williams - and police believe the shooting area related deliberate acts of retaliation against the state. It is the very definition of senseless - so much so that it seems to defy comprehension: shooting two working men, one 45, the other 48 years old who just happened to be on the streets when gunmen wanted to see someone dead. Orlando Williams and his family grew up in the same neighborhood that out studio is in - and we were struck by the chilling tragedy of his death. For context on these very crazy crimes, we look back at that night:..

Jules Vasquez reporting
It is probably one of the most affecting images I have seen in two decades covering the news: Dennis Williams holding his dead brother, Orlando's limp hand, imploring life from a body that had none left.

The tragic scene playing out under a streetlight's sickly yellow glow, a huddle of neighbors in the shadows at the corner of Dean and West Canal, a few dozen feet from where the brothers grew up.

That's where the shooter found him and let off with a barrage of bullets and it's where police put the white sheet over his body and carted the it off, the first murder for 2013.

Just 13 days previous, I had stood with those same brothers, Orlando and Dennis on West Canal, 50 feet away from where Orlando was killed.

We stood and watched Police clean up the scene on East Canal after 15 year old Reynaldo Garrido was killed. The teenager's bicycle on the street along with a constellation orange bullet markers. He too was killed for no known reason - just an irrational outburst of violence and the canal side.

Half a mile away in downtown Belize City, minutes before the Williams killing, Marco Valle had been shot once to the head on Regent Street. He is in critical condition and police suspect the shootings are related - and more worrying that the shooter could have been targeting Spanish males.

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