Coming off the Tenth of September holiday weekend, there are, sadly, three murders to report tonight.
To put it in context, we begin with this morning's police press brief where the Commissioner of Police gave details of two weekend murders in the south while simultaneously making a humble brag about his department's crime-fighting strategies.
This, after a reporter cited just 3 murders countrywide in the month of August and - now in one three day stretch, the same number of killings was recorded.
Here's how he described the situation of some successes followed by some that just slip through:
Chester Williams, Commissioner Of Police
"Certainly our crime-fighting strategy is working you will know that Belize City is the epicentre of murders and so our strategy is to see how best we can hold down Belize City and once we can do that then we can set the trend countrywide and then you will see that the type pf murders that we would be accustomed to seeing are no more at least for now and these that I refer to as City murders are what is bothering us at this time. We have for example the murder in Bella Vista in the south where the young man was walking the young lady home and her ex came an inflicted chop wounds to him leading to his death and again this morning, I don't know if you have been briefed but another body was found in the independence cemetery of a female, there appeared to be cut wounds to the neck or the throat, Mr. Yearwood will provide more details for that, but these are the types of murders that the policing effort will not be able to prevent. We just have to learn to live with them and try our best to work on those we regard as being preventable. I think that in that respect we are doing the best we can. However, we are not going to sing praises as yet, there is still a long way to go and the potential for violence within our society, particularly for Belize City is still extremely strong."
"The patrols are out; the operation teams are doing constant operation targeting these gang members. So there is a lot we are doing to try and keep the murder count down and we want to ensure that is being done for the rest of the year and even moving forward."
And it wasn't until after the press conference that the cops received additional details on the murder of the woman that this morning was being called a Jane Doe. Tonight, we know her as Marcella Makin of Independence village. She was found motionless with cut wounds to the head and throat and laying on top of a tomb in the village cemetery.
Makin, a waitress went missing on Friday night and wasn't seen again until her body was discovered this morning.
