And keeping the news on our military, on Sunday morning, at around 10, Captain Damacio Coc reportedly took his own life inside his cell in the Tango 10 building at the Belize Central Prison. He had been there for a month awaiting a bail hearing after he had breached a protection order that was taken out against him by his wife.
The police as well as the BDF have been investigating this incident, but while the police department have ruled it a suicide, Lieutenant Colonel Burns explained that they will not be making any "judgements" at this time. Instead, via Zoom, Burns gave us a rundown of what the BDF knows at this point.
Lt. Col. Jermaine Burns, Acting Chief of Staff, BDF
"He was recently promoted to captain and has been working with the light engineering company as an engineer and drafting, architectural drafting, for the specifics with his job there. Damacio was in a series of domestic issues, and I live it just at domestic issues, with his relationship with his wife. For almost a year now, we've known about it as an organization and where we could have provided counseling and advice, we did just that. He used to work for me and I remembered use to having to talk with him on multiple occasions about domestic issues. He violated a restraining order as of recent, about a month and a half ago, and that wasn't taken lightly by the authorities, he was taken to court and the courts decided that he would be remanded to the Belize Central Prison until the a court date could be decided upon for him to answer to the charges of violating that restraining order. It is routine that the BDF would visit members of the force at the Kolbe Foundation so that was being done. From the reports coming out of the duty officers that would do that on a weekly basis, there was no indication to suggest that he was in distress."
"It is only after his demise that we learnt that he was asking about his release from the central prison. He was scheduled to be released on Thursday the 29th of this month to go to court to answer to the charges and we heard on Sunday as the head of the Kolbe Foundation put it, he was checked around 8:30 the morning, there was no indication that he was unstable or anything of the sort, he doesn't have a history that we know about of suicide ideation, so it wasn't a concern for us, and then a few hours later, it is suspected that he took his own life inside the prison."
"We do not really want to speculate as to whether it was a suicide or not, we will let the family deal with that part, but I know that arrangements are being made for his post-mortem to be delayed until his mother is in country, which is a request of the family."
And Burns also explained that, having worked closely with Captain Coc in the past, there was no indication that Coc had been suicidal. In fact, he seemed to have a zest for life and dreams of furthering his career.
Reporter:
"Would you say that the captain had anger issues?"
Lt. Col. Jermaine Burns, Acting Chief of Staff, BDF
"If you know Damacio, and this is the thing that struck me, this man is what you describe as an introvert. He doesn't speak too much, he's not a rowdy individual, he's not easy to anger. I've pushed him over the edge a lot of times but he never barked back, and when I said over the edge, I was very demanding as a commanding officer of the service and sport battalion, at the time he was holding over as the officer commanding the lighting engineer company. And that's a lot of responsibilities, he was a lieutenant at the time. The captain that was in charge of the company went out to study and he held over for about three months and so he had to answer directly to me and get a lot of work done with the 70+ men that was under his command at the time and there wasn't a time that I would be back and forth-ing with this individual, there wasn't a time that he would grow angry over a lot that I pressured him with, he got the work done and he was a jovial individual. He laughed a lot, we had some good social times as well, so when I initially heard about him having domestic issues, it was shocking to me. I know he loved his child very much, I know that he would do anything for her, and I know that on advice from a lot of his senior officers, including myself, I told him that your children, or any father's children, is very important to them, any mother's children is very important to them and if it is that yourself and your spouse is not getting along well, doesn't make sense to stay and argue, you pull back but you make sure that you support that child and always be a part of that child's life. So I've never seen that individual angry, I don't know if others have, most of the other officers that I've spoken to have said the same time, we've not seen him angry."
"This young man only recently sat one of our promotional courses, it was a pilot course that we were pushing to promote lieutenants to captains, a six weeks course that's very demanding and he sat it and did very well and got promoted. Somebody that's interested in ending their lives, you wouldn't have thought that they had any sort of ambition, this young man had ambition, he was planning forward in the BDF. As a matter of fact, most of us know his dad, his dad was a career soldier as well and so we were always referring to him as they way we used to refer to his father, who has trained most of the senior officers in BDF, in jungle warfare training. And so we used to call him "Jungle Coc" because that's the way we used to call his dad. And this man used to always say he wants to be a little bit better than what his dad was like and his dad actually reached the very top rank in the soldier's bracket so I'm sure he had ambition to try and reach the top in the officer's bracket. And he used to push himself."
And his apparent suicide comes less than two months after another solider, Private Micha Miguel, also took her own life. Both incidents have left the force shaken and Burns explained they have been providing counseling to those who were closest to Coc.
Lt. Col. Jermaine Burns, Acting Chief of Staff, BDF
"Especially in such close proximities, you'd understand that it affects us all. The captain was a very good friend of mine, other than being a subordinate officer, we worked together for two years very closely, I was the commanding officer of his battalion just two years ago and so you'd understand that we had constant meetings and so together and so it's always a hi and bye kind of thing when we see each other, although we don't work directly with each other anymore but with the proximity of the recent suicide, it brings us to a point where we are very humbled to the fact that we realized that we have a serious issue in our organization that requires immediate action and that's just what we've been taking. It has provoked our wellness center to make sure that the adequate care is provided in respect to grieving and we started with grieving sessions yesterday, it's being extended throughout the week. It's a matter of mustering up the professionals to make sure they have time for us to come in and where we have to get these professionals from the private sector, then we'd have to reach out and pay accordingly for their services, but it is important that we get the unit that he was directly in charge of into grieving and again, I said that started yesterday, the fellow officers that he works with, that's going to continue until this afternoon, and i'll be attending the session this afternoon and then we're going to look at how we offer some level of help to the family members if they want to and that's a part of our suicide prevention protocol."
Captain Coc's mother is expected to arrive in the country in the next two days, and it is only after her arrival that they will conduct the postmortem.
