Belmopan police have again moved quickly to wrap up a high profile murder case - this time it's the beheading of Hilton Wade. Late this evening, Cotton Tree residents Raphael Mencias and Elroy Grinage were arraigned in Belmopan Magistrate's Court.
Mencias was charged for murder while Grinage was charged for abetment and conspiracy to commit murder.
We are told police have solid evidence linking the pair to the murder including bloody clothing, shoes, and a motorbike that may have been used to transport the head from the murder scene.
Best information suggests that it may have been a property dispute, because Wade was illegally occupying a structure and had made it his home. He may have been killed as a means of ejecting him from the property where he was squatting.
As we've been reporting, Wade was beheaded and stabbed multiple times, then the structure was burned. His body was left at the scene, and his head was left at the nearby bus stop - almost as if it was on display.
Now, very interestingly, Mencias has killed before - and in fact he just came out of jail on parole for that crime. In that case it was also a stabbing death. It happened in Carolina Village in the Corozal District in 2010 when Phillip Hall was stabbed 14 times. Mencias was found guilty of manslaughter - because the stabbing happened in his apartment. In 2015, after 5 years on remand, he was sentenced to 10 years in prison. And while he was to get out in 2020, he got paroled in August of this year. A member of the parole board told us he had gone through all the rehabilitation programs and they thought that he was rehabilitated enough to live a crime free life.
Tonight, he is back in prison along with his alleged accomplice, Grinage who was remanded. Their next court date is March second, 2018. We should note that Mencias is not on remand, he's back to serving his manslaughter sentence. That's because his parole has been revoked based on this charge.
