Tonight, the body of Alrick Smith, a notorious city street figure who'd escaped death more than once, lies at the Belize city morgue.
The 36 year old Smith was targeted on Slaughterhouse road by a gunman with a waiting getaway car. Reports are that he'd just made an appearance on a radio program where he'd donated a cash prize - which might have given away his position to gang elements who had marked him for death.
Tonight, police are on high alert after the high profile killing - staged with apparent impunity on a well known north side street - in the sight of multiple security cameras.
And while it is one more flashpoint in an escalating gang war, for his family, it is a personal tragedy because - no matter how many times Alrick Smith may have faced death - they still didn't' expect him to be murdered.
This morning I took a look at Alrick Smith's last stand and spoke to the family members who've just begun to mourn him.
He has survived so many attempts on his life that he was known in the street as the cat with 9 lives.
But his luck ran out last night when he left MORE FM studios.
Cherisse Halsall The Rene Villanueva Media Center became a crime scene last night when notorious street figure Alrick Smith left a radio appearance at MORE FM. When he exited, the man who had dodged death numerous times, couldn't escape his killer, who fired a barrage of bullets, leaving Smith slumped over, dead on Slaughterhouse Road.
It's a death that's left his father and sister devastated because given his history they saw him as a man that it seems could defy death.
Cherisse Halsall:
"Given how many times he had been targeted, did you feel that he had reached a point that he was untouchable, where he wouldn't be killed?"
Voice of: Alrick Smith Sr., Father Of The Deceased
"Like I said he felt that he was untouchable like he knew but he still said nobody will do he because he got shot so many times like he no even. He didn't feel like it was something he would go through and that's just what happen."
Voice of: Kayla Flowers, Sister Of The Deceased
"I was just talking to him on the phone like after seven and we had some plans for the weekend and then I told him well I will talk to you tomorrow, so I told him okay, and like after ten I got a call saying that they shoot him. So I was like okay they just shot him, nothing major. Then my niece called me and tell me that somebody around there told her that her father had died."
And that's when it sunk in for them that Alrick was gone. His father Alrick Sr. said he'd warned him against moving as if he didn't have a target on his back.
Alrick Smith Sr., Father Of The Deceased
"My son he was a hustler and he deh all about. He was in all the little corners them and I told him son you can't deh bout. Things are getting dred in this place so you can't be all around. And he said dad I didn't do anything to anyone and I told him you can't be everywhere and he just thought he was a big man and he listened to me but said nobody would do anything to him but I told him, things get out of hand and you have to watch how you move."
But whatever Alrick had done in the streets his family saw him as a different sort of man, a good father and a joy to be around.
Voice of: Kayla Flowers, Sister Of The Deceased
"He dah mi a nice person. He like talking foolishness, he liked to dance around, mess with you, you know, joke anything you needed he would help you with it. Once he had it he would give it to you."
"The public will have their opinion about him and we don't really care what they have to say negative because we know people who come in contact with him know the good person he is."
Alrick Senior says that his Jr. is the second son he's lost to street violence.
Alrick Smith Sr., Father Of The Deceased
"I haven't even gone to the morgue. I'm going there later but really it hurt me because it's my second son and it's made me stress out. It's a stress on my mind it's like I just have to stay in it and just try to set up things to bury him quick, the quicker the better. I don't want to have any beefing with anybody. I just want everything to stay cool and make the young bwoy they put down the gun because we are one black people and that's not nice things are happening and like nobody is looking out for anybody, rough."
Smith becomes the 9th person to be murdered in the month of July and the 69th person to be murdered in 2022. At the end of July 2021, there had been 60 murders.
