Police are also looking into a shooting that happened yesterday afternoon on Saint Thomas Street in Belize City near the YWCA. The intended target of that attack escaped unharmed, but his would-be assailant opened fire in a busy part of the City where school children could have been caught by stray bullets.
Here's what the Commissioner had to say about that incident:
Chester Williams - Commissioner of Police
"I would want to say to the citizenry that the City is still fairly safe. The person who was shot at yesterday is a known gang figure. That does not justify that it was right to shoot at him. And certainly, we are doing what we can to identify who is responsible and try to see what can be done to bring them to justice. We are not seeing a trend where the ordinary law-abiding citizen out there is being targeted. That we're not seeing, and on that premise, I am saying that the City is still fairly safe. In terms of saying that there's an upward trend, I would not say it because even when you compare our stats this year to last year, we're seeing that we're practically - as you said before - on par in some areas. And some years we are below last year's figure. That goes to show that there's a lot that the police have been doing to be able to make the City as safe as we possibly can. When we look at the incident of Mr. Vernon, that is a different type of case in the sense that there was some argument that somebody before, which is not gang-related. It's not the conventional type of killings would normally see in a city. So, that one came out of the left field. We have a suspect in custody for that matter, and we're hoping that the police will be able to put the pieces together, that we can lay charges against that individual."
