The gun violence in Belize City has been relentless since the year started and it continued on the weekend when there were two acts of gunplay on the streets. On Saturday night, that violence resulted in the murder of 25-year-old Bruce Cocom, who was shot twice near a restaurant on Central American Boulevard. Today his mother told us that just before he was killed, she had asked her son not to leave home.
Alfonso Noble Reporting,
Sometime after midnight on Saturday night 25 year old Bruce Cocom went to this Chinese shop on Central American Boulevard. He was approached by a gunman who shot and killed him as he stood at the store's service window. Cocom's mother Irma says she had seen her son just minutes earlier.
Irma Cocom,
"Bruce reached home about twenty to twelve and he told me he was going out back. I told him not to go about back because it was already late and it was raining and he insisted and said he will put on his shirt and go out back. And I insisted and told him not to go out there back because a lot of things happen out there on the street."
Not heeding his mothers advice, Bruce left his home on Jane Usher Boulevard
and made his way to Central American Boulevard. Shortly after leaving Irma says she got a call that her son had been shot.
Irma Cocom,
"About after 12, 12:15, they came and somebody knocked the door, I don't know who, one of his friends knocked on the door and said Bruce just got shot and the person told me to go to hospital. I was standing up and I didn't know the police and everybody were up the street and then they met me by the corner, right by Boulevard, and then they started to tell me what happened to my son. They took me up the street and when I went up there, they had already found Bruce on the ground there dead and nobody didn't run when they reached out there. According to what I understand, they said he got about two shots. But the people tell me they heard more than two shots, they said they heard about five shots out there."
The 25-year-old Cocom died on the spot and now his mother is trying to figure out why he was killed. She says minutes before he was killed he did not seem concerned about being in any harm's way.
Irma Cocom,
"He says he didn't have anything with anyone and he told me he didn't have problems with anyone and he didn't know why they would to hurt me out there, just like that he told me. I told him nobody would want to hurt you when you go out at night, anything can happen. Every Friday I always tell him not to go out because when he comes home, I know he was drinking, and all kinds of things happen out there. He told me he had to go meet somebody out there, some girl, I don't know whom. I would have wanted him to stay home. He just wanted to go out back. I left him to go."
Unable to have done any more to prevent her son from going back out, this mother is now left to grieve and hope that the killer is caught.
Police are investigating this homicide, and while they do so they are also looking into another shooting that occurred earlier on Saturday.
