Belmopan Businesswoman Claims Self-defense in Fatal Shooting  

Belmopan resident, Ronald Gibson died today after he was shot by a businesswoman who claims that he tried to rob her. Gilda Abadi told police that Gibson tried to attack her and her daughter in Belmopan. Abadi pulled out her licensed firearm and shot Gibson in the stomach. It’s an incident that Commissioner Williams says appears to be self-defense. But Gibson’s sister, Shawn Gardiner, who spoke to her brother before he died, vehemently disagrees with Abadi’s account of what transpired.

 

Chester Williams, Commissioner of Police

“From all indications, the investigation is showing that the lady acted in defense of herself and her child. It happened that the person died a couple days after, so what we’ll do is what we normally would do, is to put together the file and we send it to the D.P.P.”

 

Reporter

“Now, you know, we always speak about the justified use of lethal force, and one of the issues is always proportionality. Clearly, the woman felt she was under grave mortal threat. Understandably, it’s she and her daughter, but are you concerned that perhaps it will not meet that threshold of proportionality to use lethal force against someone who is holding you up to rob you?”

 

Chester Williams

“I do not think so. The woman and her child were together. The man accosted them to rob them. She ordered him to stop. He continued to make moves towards her. Generally, a man is stronger than a woman. She was armed with a weapon. Imagine him approaching her and would have been able to hold on to her, get a hold of her firearm. He certainly would have overpowered her, would have taken away that gun and maybe would have killed her. I don’t foresee an instance where her actions would not be deemed justified, but I’m not going to be the arbiter of that issue. It is going to be left for the DPP. But for my legal standpoint, I do not see how that could happen. I believe she acted in self-defense.

 

Shawn Gardiner, Sister of Ronald Gibson

“She’s claiming that she didn’t have a bullet in her gun, so my question is how comes my brother got shot if she didn’t have a bullet in a gun. And from what my brother told me, he was walking on the side of the walkway and it was dark and he didn’t see who shot him. He just felt it, and he wasn’t robbing nobody because he was a distance away from Ms Amadi. So Ms Amadi or Abadi or whatever is her name, has to get her facts right. He wasn’t even close to them and you have to hear about two sides of a story, you know, so I need justice for my brother because this won’t be left like this. I’ll sue her if I have to, or whosoever did it because I met someone in Belmopan personally and he told me that it wasn’t that lady that shot my brother so my question is who shot my brother?”