Just after midnight, gunshots rang out in Ladyville but it wasn't until after daybreak that the body of 21-year-old Cameron Hemsley was discovered. Hemsley was killed less than two weeks after coming off of remand for firearm charges. Those who knew him said that he'd always been a troublemaker, but that he was also just a young man in need of some guidance. Courtney Menzies went to Ladyville today and has this story.
21-year-old Cameron Hemsley only enjoyed 12 days of freedom before he was gunned down on Seagull Street in Ladyville. He'd just been released from prison on February 2nd after being charged with robbery and aggravated assault upon a police officer back in 2022.
And while his family and his community members tried their best to keep him out of trouble, it wasn't enough to keep him alive. He was killed after midnight, but his body wasn't found until around 6 this morning. One of his friends told us today that he'd been with Hemsley not long before the gunshots rang out.
Keith McNab, Friend of Deceased
"We interact all the time, everyday. Cameron was just a young little youth, we try to guide him around this neighborhood so that he doesn't get into any trouble or anything like that, as much as we could, we try to stop him from getting into the wrong thing. Basically we would try to get work to keep him occupied, but he's someone who keeps running around all around the place so it's hard to catch up with him at times and then last night I left him at the Chinese store and he followed me to this house over here but I didn't want the company so I skipped him and when I got by the center I told him I'm going home, just to make him go home but unfortunately he didn't want to go home, he stayed out there with the crowd that was there, drinking and hanging out as usual and by the time I reach home I heard the gunshot. I said I'm not coming back out because when you done make up your mind to go home you don't come back out. When I came out this morning, they told me it was him that they shot."
McNab says he doesn't know who pulled the trigger or why, but he also doesn't think the murder of a young man could be justified despite his history of theft.
Keith McNab, Friend of Deceased
"It's kind of funny how people in Belize kill people for material things, things that could be replaced. I would say people need to try to have more mercy than to just kill people for things like if you do something, you take something from somebody's yard, these things are no grounds for you to kill people for. If someone steals something, there's ways you go about getting them, getting back your stuff through the law. I don't believe in killing people for things like that so to me it's wrong. They could have had mercy on the youth."
"He was a youth that was just looking for guidance. You know you grow up, you don't have that parental guidance everyday because his mother, it's not like they abandoned him or anything, the mother do try hard for the youth but like she have her job so they have to be apart and that's when he takes to the streets and does his own stuff."
Though his mother chose not to speak, she told us that while she knows he committed crimes, he was loving to his family, and she tried as much as she could to steer him in the right direction.
Police have not made any arrests so far.
