Mother and Daughter Charged for Obstructing Murder Investigation

A mother celebrating her fifty-first birthday feels that she and her family were mistreated by the Belize Police Department. The trouble started when she couldn’t provide surveillance footage to help with an investigation into a recent murder on Reggae Street, leading the police to break into her home. Things escalated on Friday when she and her daughter, twenty-nine-year-old Adilah Abdullah, were hit with criminal charges, including obstructing a police officer and aggravated assault.  This morning, Delcia and Adilah walked to court to face separate charges related to last week’s murder of Floyd Hyde. Delcia is relieved to be out on bail after both mother and daughter were jointly charged with obstructing a police officer.  Commissioner of Police Chester Williams explained what took place.

 

Chester Williams, Commissioner of Police

“Our investigation team was in the area canvassing, looking for evidence.  There is a house in the area that has a surveillance camera.  The police went there and they refused to cooperate with the investigators in terms of getting the surveillance footage.  I was contacted and I told the police, get a search warrant under the indictable procedures act which states that the police can go and search and confiscate any evidence that can be used in a criminal investigation.  So on the strength of a police warrant, the police went to the house.  The police were there with the search warrant to execute the search for the evidence that we needed and they refused to let the police in.  I told the police again, jump the fence and go in.  The police did so and they were able to retrieve a SIM card that had the recording, but they had deleted the recording from the SIM card.  So we are applying to the court today to get a court order to search the SIM card.  We do have the equipment to be able to retrieve whatever was deleted from that SIM card.  We have the equipment to retrieve whatever was deleted, but we want to make sure that we do everything in accordance with the law.  And so, I have said to them, make sure that they get the court order where the court will be giving the police the authority to get the SIM card and retrieve what is there.”