He was a harmless older man, but to two teenagers who are believed to have chopped him, 71-year-old Juan Tot Cac was just prey. Tot-Cac, a resident of La Democracia, went missing yesterday evening, and was found dead at 9:30; he had been chopped to death. I was at the farm today to try and find out why Tot was killed.
Alfonso Noble Reporting,
71-year-old Guatemalan national Juan Tot-Cac was in these fields working yesterday evening. When it was time to retire for the day he walked along this orange orchard's access road to go back to his camp at mile three on the Coastal Road. But he would never made it back. Orlando Guzman is the foreman for the Citrus Company of Belize Farm where tot was employed. He says his employees became worried when tot never made it home.
Orlando Guzman,
"I gathered some workers and told them we need to find Mr. Juan Tot-Cac because it looked like something happened to this man and I understand that two guys went behind there and so probably something might have happened. Right there we found the knapsack, about twenty feet from where the body was and a cap was over the knapsack and the body was a little more ahead, face down. The man had a big cut by his neck and another one which came straight by the side here so."
Guzman says that after tot had finished his work he walked back to camp but he never made it. According to the account of his workers, two young men, one 15 and one 17, who were in a gang of workers clearing land nearby, hopped onto bicycles and followed Tot-Cac to this spot where they pounced on him with machetes chopping him twice to the back of the neck and to the face.
Orlando Guzman,
"All of them were cutting up sticks in the open space. I put all of them there to cut sticks with machetes. But then this same Adrian Paul Morris said that the work was too hard for him and he wasn't messing with this. He said he preferred to wait for those people out there and assault them and chop off their head and thief their money because that was the easiest thing to do. That was what he was saying while we were going. The two guys moved on bicycles behind the old man and that is what he reported to me at the office at 6:30 in the evening. These guys I wouldn't have expected that they would do something like that because they are young yet.; one is only about fifteen years old and the other is about seventeen years old."
And now Guzman is left to wonder why these teenagers would savagely attack a 71-year-old man. He speculates that robbery may have been the motive.
Orlando Guzman,
"This man didn't have anything against them and I don't think they had anything against the man. I feel like this was something that they decided to do and they followed the man, maybe to take away the man's money because it only could be that. When the thing happened, they must have gotten afraid and when they saw that this happened, maybe they didn't expect that something like this would happen, and they decided to kill the man because his money was still there with him. When the policemen checked, they found ten fifties and a hundred, a twenty, a five, and a two dollar. That adds to about six hundred and twenty seven dollars more or less."
But while the young men were unable to make off with anything, what they did do is shatter his confidence in employing just anyone. But he thinks now that he should have known something didn't add up with these two employees; because it was apparent from the outset that they were not interested in the kind of work available on the farm.
Orlando Guzman,
"I told the man that I will give them a easier job to remove all those vines from those trees and cut down the pieces which the herbicide didn't burn and try to take it off and work here for the balance of the day. If felt sorry for them but then they had a different type of mind. When we hire people we don't know what type of people we are hiring. We know that they are Belizeans but we don't expect something like that because they look innocent. We can't just watch on people's faces and say they are this and this so we gave them a job because we know that they live close, are Belizeans, and it would look bad for me to only hire people from outside and not Belizeans. If I would only employ people from over, and don't employ Belizeans, the first thing they would say is that I am a racist right. It will look bad because Belizeans need work because we have several of them working here together, they come from different areas; some from Mahogany Heights, some from Dangriga, from Cayo, and I always try to give them a job- that is my duty this side once we are employing workers because we have to employ Belizeans."
Police would only say that they are now looking for the two young men for questioning, up to news time they had not been found.
