And with its first Covid-19 outbreak appearing, the prison is also facing questions about the sudden death of one of its guards.
He is Shawn Bainton, a guard who in the last few days was said to have been involved in testing and contact tracing.
Suspicions have arisen that Bainton who died of either a stroke or a heart attack, but that he could have faced those complications after contracting COVID-19.
We put the question to C.E.O. Murillo this morning but he believes that to be highly unlikely given that in the last week of his life, Bainton had received two negative COVID tests.
Cherisse Halsall
"Mr. Bainton, there are a lot of rumours right now, there's a rumour that he may have died of COVID, there's another rumour that he may have been poisoned, what's your perspective on this sudden death and how it came about?"
Virgilio Murillo - C.E.O, Kolbe Foundation
"Well, I certainly cannot comment to the poisoning, I haven't heard it and I wouldn't cast any aspersions myself, however, I feel very confident that it would not be COVID, coincidentally Mr. Bainton was one of those persons who was assisting with getting the inmates and the other prison officers screened for the COVID that the Ministry of Health is carrying out currently in the prison. He certainly had pre-existing conditions and I would want to leave it at that let the Ministry of health do their thing, but what I will tell you in no uncertain terms is that he was tested twice, he did a PCR test but I think his PCR test if I'm not mistaken was done on Monday and the results came back Tuesday and he was negative and he was also tested again I think yesterday because he was mingling with some of the very same prisoners and prison officers the other two prison officers that came back positive so just as a precaution we wanted to double-check him so a rapid test was done on him and that came out negative. So, I feel confident about the COVID it's just typical of Belizeans to spread rumours."
A postmortem is still pending.
