Tonight, the family of Reese Fitzgibbon, a resident of Supal Street, is complaining publicly that police officers from Belize City shot him for a trivial reason.
7News understands that on Saturday night, Fitzgibbon was picked up along with another person because police wanted to question him about a shooting that occurred earlier that night on Amara Avenue in Belize City.
This cell phone footage captures the aftermath of gun violence on Amara, where 2 persons were injured.
This morning, Fitzgibbon's irate family members showed up at the Raccoon Street Police Station to make a report to Professional Standards Branch, and to find out about his detention since the weekend.
Here's what his girlfriend told the press about his encounter with police on Saturday:
Kamesha Shiel - Girlfriend of Shooting Victim
"I was at work on Saturday night, when I got a phone call. They called me at my work and told me that I needed to go home; I have an emergency. So, when I reached home, my babies and my sister-in-law told me that police shot my boyfriend. So, I asked, why. They had a funeral Saturday during the day when they went to bury their cousin, the young man who was killed in Mahogany Heights. So, when they were at the funeral, they left early because they said that they don't want the police to harass them. They end up leaving the funeral early, and after that, they went home. I went to work. He was watching the baby. So, police - look's like some shooting happened at Amara, and they must feel that it's a retaliation - or I don't know what's the motive what they think. They ended up going on Supal Street to arrest everybody. But, he was explaining to them, how will you take me, and I am with my baby. I can't go and leave the babies by themselves. They said, 'Well, we don't give a ', this and that. They were railing up. They roughed him up. My baby said that they were roughing him up from he was in the house, and they ended up handcuffing him from he was inside the house with them. They took him into the police truck, and he was telling them, how will you all leave my babies by themselves, and he told them to go to his mother. 'Let her watch you until your mother comes home.' At the same time, they already handcuffed him, placed him in the truck, and they just shot him, and when they finished shooting him, they said, 'You see what you caused because you aren't listening to us. Just let's go.' After that, they will say that he was resisting arrest. How will someone resist arrest when you already handcuffed him from he was inside. You all already took him into the truck and shot him because we have cameras in our yard. We normally post up when the police just go there and beat down the door like they don't have sense. We have cameras in the yard, why didn't you all shoot him in the yard? Why did you all wait until he was in the truck?"
Reporter
"Is your boyfriend connected to that shooting in any kind of way to cause police to suspect them?"
Kamesha Shiel
"No sir. No sir. These are the streets and the police know exactly who did the shooting because it's not like they don't know. They will always want to find somebody to just hold to let people feel -yeah. He doesn't have anything to do with that. He was at home. If He wouldn't go with them, he wouldn't allow them to take him. He could have run if he knew he did something. Nobody ran from them. All the boy was explaining to them is that he can't go because he left the children by themselves."
Fitzgibbon's family insists that the officers attempted to suppress the evidence of what they think is an egregious excess. They say that the cops did not know that he had his cell phone, which he used to take this picture of his gunshot injuries. He posted it on Facebook. That picture was subsequently reported, and it was taken down. Shortly after that, his phone was taken away.
Fitzgibbon is well known to police most recently charged in in January of 2018, he and another man were charged with attempted murder for a shooting incident on Iguana Street.
