Citizens of the Capital City are shaken tonight after a broad daylight murder at the entrance to the City's new market. It's on South Ring road, right across from the Social Security Building, as bustling and busy an area as you will find Belmopan. But that didn't stop a brazen shooter from opening fire at minutes to midday, killing one and injuring the other.
It played out in front of a gaggle of customers and market-goers including children. Cherisse Halsall tells us how fisherman Reinaldo Ruiz was slain in the heart of Belmopan.
I'm standing in the Belmopan market, a center of community and commerce, a place where the everyman and woman spend their Tuesdays and Fridays in pursuit of the best deal on fresh food. But all that activity came to a shocking halt today when there was a murder in the market.
The victim is Reinaldo Ruiz, a tour guide turned fisherman who hails from Pomona village. We found his sideman, still washing his blood off of their coolers.
He chose to appear off camera but called today the most horrible day of his life, and said that the shooter, who shot his boss in the back, committed a cold-blooded murder in the midst of a late-morning crowd.
Voice of: Eyewitness
"Everybody is trying to ask me a few questions, if I saw anything but in that situation c'mon use your discretion, anybody. I haven't seen anything, I'm trying to save my life."
"When this situation happened I definitely knew, or I couldn't know what would have happened with this gunman but the point is that I was walking right basically in front of my table and it was from behind us that it came, I felt the bullet, I felt the bullet, up until now I'm still trembling and that's because I don't know what happened and I wasn't the one who got shot. I was someone behind me who bawled you know so God just works in mysterious ways."
"I watched my boss man there bleeding with these thousands of people, nobody came around and I still have to be the one to just pick up his head and try to cover the wound so that he's bleeding a little less you know until assistance came by."
Another man was also shot in the spray of gunfire, Kelvin Tillett was right across from the victim's stall.
Rodney Nunez saw the whole thing. He sets up twice a week to sell his fish in the stall right next to Ruiz's and was shocked to see a fellow vendor gone in a flash. This morning he told us that the market is in serious need of a fence.
Rodney Nunez, Market Vendor
"I heard the shots them, I heard bow bow bow, and he got shot and my homeboy got shot on the other side you know, check it out we're here selling the grunt for the front and the Jack for the back, you know the Barrow for the arrow, but when the barrow came that was when I heard the bow bow bow bow bow."
"A life is gone and you can't bring that back, you know, a good friend, a good man selling fish just like I do."
"This place freshly opens up and people will be kind of scared to come, we need police presence here or we need security you know, I can't put it on the management here because the management takes care of the place and everything but the thing is that we need security, we need this place to be fenced because if anybody wants to jump on the other side to do damage to somebody then most naturally somebody then most naturally somebody will see them. So we need this place to get fenced."
Management is well aware of what the market needs but Market manager Dean Bellini says that this incident isn't an indication of an unsafe environment and has to do with an individual who was marked for death.
Dean Bellini, Market Manager
"We considered the market to be safe from the get-go until the Individual that got murdered here started doing business here. We found out that he is known to the police and that there have been threats on his life and maybe attempts in the past. This person was targeted directly. The individual, the assailant that fled the scene after the incident took place came directly to his place of business and did what he did and took off."
"I saw the individual fleeing the scene but I cannot identify him. It was not an issue concerning vendors like squabbles between each other, one vendor injuring another vendor or something like that. This was it was completely isolated and the guy was a target. We know that if people don't get the story right they might judge the story wrongly but as long as they can hear it from us and if they want to come first hand and ask someone who witnessed it they will definitely know that it's still safe to come out here. We ask them to keep coming, continue doing business here. We don't believe they're at risk."
The market manager says they plan to put a fence around the perimeter, but, that can't bring back what Belmopan lost today - it seems that more than a life was taken here at the market, this broad daylight murder also took a good part of this quiet city's sense of security.
Kevin Tillett, the second man shot in the incident, was taken to the Western Regional Hospital where he remains in a stable condition.
