But one man was shooting to kill on Partridge Street on Saturday night. A murder occurred just after 7:00 p.m. and it was a killing prompted by, of all things, a cell phone. I’ve been following it up since morning, and here’s the story.
Marsha Thompson, Sister of Murder Victim
“As long you bawl out for help and my brother is around, he will come and help you because he doesn’t believe in chance people, take advantage of people – that is not him. He respects everybody, smile with everybody, but I could say they chanced him out of his life. He was doing the right think at the time when he died.”
Thirty one year old Raymond Mark Thompson Jr. better known as Quincy was shot in the back of his head because he simply came to the aid of his next door tenant Margaret Flowers.
Lloyd Flowers, Landlord
“He actually run down this man and shot him in the head, that is cold – that is execution style.”
Jacqueline Godwin,
And for what?
Lloyd Flowers,
“For a cellular phone pet.”
The female tenant told police that a man who had broken into her one room apartment where she stayed with her two young children tried to steal her cell phone. She refused and that is when she was threatened. According to the landlord Lloyd Flowers, he first thought it was a lover’s quarrel but then things got out of control.
Lloyd Flowers,
“Then I heard my name call. I heard someone say for me to help them and because I am the proprietor of the place I had to jump there, there is no two ways about that. Yes I went to the back door to come downstairs and my wife and granddaughter were already at the backdoor already. By the time I reached by them, I heard the gunshot go
off.”
As Flowers made it downstairs he saw the person he believed to be the gunman walk out of the apartment building and slip out through the front gate.
Lloyd Flowers,
“Again I hear the news said the boy had on a white T-shirt. The boy had on a light blue shirt but I didn’t come down with any kind of protection and a man just fired shot after someone, just killed someone and so I won’t just confront that man, I am not stupid. So he went so and I came between the wall and the front of my vehicle, my vehicle was parked this way in the yard. So but my concern was the person who got hurt.”
Thompson’s girlfriend who was also confronted by the gunman did not wish to be interviewed but she did tell Flowers why her boyfriend was shot. Apparently Thompson went to the lady’s room when he first heard the noise but he saw nothing out of the ordinary and returned to his room.
Lloyd Flowers,
“When the child started to holler and bawl because they were choking the little girl or something like that, then he went to their aid. But when we got to the door this time, the boy confronted him with the gun. But he knows the boy, there is no two ways about that. Quincy knew the boy. When Quincy saw who it was and he saw a man, he wanted the man to know that he isn’t dangerous – that he isn’t getting into it and that he was just concerned about what happened. Quincy’s girl got between the gunman and Quincy and told him to duck and he went under and walked away. I came downstairs and she was telling him to get up. I asked him to get up but no response. When I put my hand he was still breathing and he was breathing heavy.”
But while Margaret Flowers claims she was thrown on the bed and a gun placed under her chin after she refused to surrender her phone. Flowers says he is disturbed by that report.
Lloyd Flowers,
“She is not giving the truth about this thing. Believe me because Margaret gives some contradictory stories because she came to me the evening and said she didn’t get paid and she can’t pay her rent until Tuesday, today. How are you going to go and buy a phone for $1,000? Give me a break. You see where I am coming from?”
Jacqueline Godwin,
And a phone that she claims she just purchased?
Lloyd Flowers,
“Yes. She can hardly mind her pickney so how will she go and buy a phone for $1,000. She is not telling the truth. She knows good what is happening.”
The police initially detained Margaret Flowers for questioning, but she has since been released. Suspicions though still center on her next door neighbor Alex Meyers because there are reports that he may be involved.
Lloyd Flowers,
“The girl and the kids, when the gun on Margaret, he said that it was Alex’s gun, the boy who lives there – that is the boy who the police have held right now. So that means he had shown them this gun all along, that the kids know the gun and she knows the gun. As they saw the gun they knew that was Alex’s gun.”
Marsha Thompson,
“So much stories…only who was there really knows what happened because the person who killed him waited until he turned his back to shot him in the back of his head because they said he went out and talked to the young man, because he knew the person who did it, and then he just walked back to his room and he shot him right to the back of the head.”
But was Margaret Flowers set up to be robbed and just how much more she may know is what Belize City police are trying to determine…all that we do know is that an innocent man got caught up in the mix and was killed in the process.
Lloyd Flowers,
“And the boy work hard. Sometime that boy leaves her in the morning and he doesn’t come back until the next morning because he works at the Coke factory up near the airport, and to lose his life this kind of way because he wanted to help somebody – that hurts man – that hurts me a lot.”
Marsha Thompson,
“Of course we want justice because then my brother doesn’t rob, my brother doesn’t thief, my brother works seven days a week. He worked at Coca Cola, he had his job, he into work and mek his money – he works.”
Meanwhile Lloyd Flowers says he is disappointed in the police because he believes they should have tried to give more assistance to Raymond Flowers after he was shot.
Lloyd Flowers,
“I told the policeman help me and take the man to hospital because he wasn’t dead yet. You know those people actually left that man there to die. They are as bad as the man who shot him. I talked with Chester and Chester said things like that they can’t do. But then if the police can’t do that, then we better change the law. He said they couldn’t move the body because if they moved the body and the body died on the way to the hospital, the family could turn around and sue the police. Now I have a problem with that. I have one daughter and four sons and I wouldn’t want this to happen.”
Police are reportedly looking for someone from the Ghost Town area. And while he was prominent in this case, it’s the last time we’ll
be seeing Senior Superintendent Chester Williams on the frontline in a while. He has been transferred to headquarters in Belmopan where he will work out of the decidedly downscale Planning, Performance, Review and Inspection Unit. It’s a major demotion, as he goes from being second in charge of the busiest police formation in the country to basically first in charge at an office far from the frontline whose role is at best, strictly administrative, and at worst, wholly conceptual.
