Police have made a breakthrough in a four-year-old Crooked Tree murder case - arresting and charging a second man in the brutal killing of 69-year-old Geoffrey Gilbert Crawford. In 2021, he was kidnapped from his home, beaten to death, and buried in a shallow grave near his property.
The new accused is 31-year-old Patrick Lloyd Young, a Belizean sanitation worker of Dangriga. Young, who had been on the run since the incident, was escorted this morning by CIB officers to Belize City Magistrate's Court, where he was arraigned on a single charge of murder before Magistrate Mannan Dennison.
Young was remanded to the Belize Central Prison until November 28, 2025, when the court will begin the disclosure process. He will now stand trial jointly with the first accused, 41-year-old Maurice Esley Usher, a Belize City construction worker of Taylor's Alley.
At the time investigators concluded that the men beat Crawford to the head and buried him, while leaving his vehicle abandoned about 50 yards from a freshly dug shallow grave. They got into his house by asking him for a jump start.
