He's the vice principal of Wesley High School, but police say Melvin Hewlett is also a drug trafficker. The 35 year-old career educator was caught in a sting set up by the GSU. Our information is that GSU busted a small time drug peddler who offered to lead them to his main supplier in exchange for some leniency with charges. So, last week Friday, before Midday, a team of officers followed this informant to the Wesley College on Yarborough Road. There, they observed him making an exchange with Hewlett, who had been identified as the main supplier. They then immediately closed in on both men.
That's when Hewlett - according to GSU - spotted them coming, and he threw a piece of crumpled white paper into the Wesley College compound. The officers immediately detained him, and escorted him to where the paper had landed. When they retrieved it, and opened it up, the officers found 2 transparent plastic bags containing suspected crack cocaine. When they weighed it in his presence, they found out that the two bags contained a total of 14 grams.
Now, anything over one grams is treated as drug trafficking under the law. So, the officers had to move swiftly to charge him with drug trafficking - because we are told they experienced major push back from higher ups. This is because Hewlett's is reported to be politically well connected - and that alone slowed police down from searching his home.
Still, Hewlett was formally arrested and charged with drug trafficking and arraigned on Friday afternoon before Magistrate Deborah Rogers, where he pleaded not guilty and was released bail of $7,000. He must return to court on January 8, 2016.
It's a major scar on the reputation of this Vice-Principal and well-known member of the Methodist family. He is also a community activist who was - until very recently - organizing sporting events. Seen here in 2009 as a part of Dr. Herbert Gayle's research team on gang recruitment of Belize City youths, he was talking - interestingly enough - about the market for drug sales:
FILE: December 15, 2009
Melvin Hewlett, Vice principal - Wesley High School
"Many youths use and sell drugs such as Marijuana, crack-cocaine and sometimes as one of the main reasons, they do this to support their families. Some of them sold drugs to support their family as early as they were 13."
Again, that was in 2009. And, now in 2015, Hewlett is the one charged for drug trafficking.
And the most important element in all this is that - as a senior administrator - he is entrusted with the safety of the students of Wesley College - which is where police say he was trafficking drugs. That's why it's of major concern to parents that the school may have been exposed at the highest level - to someone dabbling in drugs.
Today, we went to speak with Joan Tillett, the Principal of Wesley, who is Hewlett's boss. She refused to give any comments or information. We also visited the office of Reverend Roosevelt Papouloute, the President of the Methodist Conference of Belize. We were informed that he was not in office. We left our contact information, but up until news time, we've not received any calls from Papouloute.
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