Belize City police had no choice but to release one of their own after the director of public prosecutions stated there is insufficient evidence to link twenty one year old police constable Gilbert Hyde Jr. to the bloody double homicide on Valentine’s Day. On that day Esso employees Roberto Torres and Eugene Flores were riding home on their bicycles when they were gunned down on Gill Street in the Port Loyola area.
Gilbert Hyde Jr. had been charged with conspiracy to commit murder. But this morning when his attorney Tricia Pitts went to the Supreme Court to sign his bail application, she told our 7NEWS court reporter that she was surprised when they told her that she need not apply because the DPP’s office is withdrawing the charges against her client. After the DPP had perused the case file he could not find any evidence to substantiate the charge against Hyde.
According to Hyde’s lead attorney Bernard B.Q. Pitts he had expected such an outcome because from the start it was a bogus charge. Seems that PC Hyde was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. As an officer of the law, Hyde felt obligated to notify authorities that he was in the area but instead he was arrested and accused of being part of the conspiracy to cause the death of both men.
A fifteen-year-old minor who police believed to have been the shooter was also arrested and charged. He remains at Hattieville Prison along with twenty two year old Ryan Felix.
