7 News Belize

Brutality Victim, Andres Rodriguez, Speaks
posted (April 16, 2015)
28 year old driver Andres Rodriguez was beaten by police at his home in front of his wife and son on Sunday night. The video that his wife captured went viral on Facebook and made the news. As we told you one of the officers has been charged for wounding while the others have been will face disciplinary action. Well, Rodriguez came to Belize City today to tell us that outcome is not enough, far from it. He visited our studios today and gave us his personal account of the horrifying incident and told us why he thinks these officers should be sent home. His narrative of the event begins after the police officers approached him in his vehicle and broke his glass window as he drove off.

Andres Rodriguez
"Says he was beaten for no reason. When I was reaching near to where I live, I realized the police was following me and I stopped in the middle of the road. I didn't even park the car in the garage where I should have park it… and so that is when I stopped and came out of the car and suddenly the police started to hit me without saying anything…they told me nothing. When they started to beat me my only reaction was to get into my house because my house was close by. I tried to get into my house and they dropped or loosened the gate and that was when my foot got stuck in the gate. So when I was trying to take my foot out, they started to beat me with the stick in my head, I got many hits in my head until I had to fall and I was as telling them my foot was caught under the gate and I don't know if they understood me or they didn't speak Spanish but I was telling them my foot, my foot!!! …I was even showing them my foot but then they were pulling me and my foot didn't permit me to get up or to go with them."

"For me it is not enough. I want justice. I don't think they should be police officers if they treat people like that - people who do not do anything wrong and for those who do bad or who are …criminals they don't do anything to them. They are free!"

"Right now my son is like traumatized he can't even hear the ambulance siren or of the police patrol and he starts to cry or scream and my wife is the same and that is what angers me the most because it is affecting my family psychologically. They were there, they saw everything and more my son is what hurts me the most out of all of this."

Rodriguez also told us that one of the officers captured in the video even threatened to shoot him. And if that scene at his house was not enough, Rodriguez revealed today that he got another round of beating at the police station after the incident and that the officer had to be restrained. As for the woman who made the report that sparked this entire incident, Rodriguez said that she was taken to the hospital to see him and when she did she told the officers that she did not know Rodriguez. He told us that he does not know her either, and that it was mere coincidence that they were in the same area that night. Reports say she was going through a domestic dispute with her husband and was on high alert.

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