Girlfriend Tries to Save Boyfriend Shot Outside Burger Stand in Roaring Creek

Belizeans seem to greet each weekend with apprehension now, wondering who the latest victims of gang violence will be. On Saturday evening, a young couple stopped for a bite to eat. That decision would prove deadly. Twenty one year old Malcolm Hyde died while undergoing treatment at the Western Regional Hospital. News Five’s Paul Lopez travelled west today to speak to Hyde’s girlfriend who was with him in Roaring Creek when it happened and had tried to save his life. She recounted the painful ordeal, as investigators seek to establish a motive.

Voice of Darcy Wright, Girlfriend of Murder Victim

“He said lets go to Millers to get a burger there or something else. I said ok, and I just never think about never fuh guh eena dah area, because I know ih nuh suppose to guh eena dah area like that. But, I wasn’t thinking.”

Paul Lopez, Reporting

Darcy and Malcolm Hyde made a stop at Millers Depot for an evening burger. What she and her boyfriend, Malcolm Hyde did not consider was the fact that this was rival territory. Hyde was on the passenger side of this vehicle waiting for Darcy who went inside. Before she could even place her order, the unthinkable happened.

Darcy Wright

“As I walked inside, I just hold the menu and the shots went off. It went off.  I said, no no no, that is my man. I ran outside, and as I ran outside I saw him in the seat and he was shaking. I screamed and when I looked around everyone there was on the floor. I didn’t even see where the person came from and where he went. I didn’t know. It couldn’t, it happen so fast.”

With no time to waste Darcy jumped in the driver’s seat and sped to the Western Regional Hospital, about a fifteen minutes drive from where the shooting occurred. She recalls onlookers telling her to slow down, in fear that she might crash.

Darcy Wright

“But then they saw him and they saw the blood and I was driving and I was going across the bump. I told him when I saw his face, “No! You are not going to die here, and I reached that hospital…”

Despite her speed, and doctor’s efforts, after undergoing three hours of surgery Hyde didn’t make it. A gunshot wound to his lung proved to be the fatal blow. Wright believes her boyfriend became a causality of a long standing feud in the village between the “Another World Area” and the “Hattieville Area”; communities separated by the Highway.

Darcy Wright

“I think this beef thing weh deh call it, weh deh got, this the go on for a while. This side against that side, I nuh know what dah the, I nuh know what is the real reason behind this. Because, from I was growing up I always heard about this side and that side not getting along.”

Police says they are yet to establish a motive, but from what they have been able to gather, information suggests that Hyde recently had a conflict with persons from that neighborhood. Investigators are questioning whether he was lured to his death.

ASP Fitzroy Yearwood, Communications Director, Belize Police Department

“Anybody in their right mind knowing that you have problem with people in a certain area, nobody, I don’t think you would want to be tested, to go in that area knowing what the end result could be. That is why the investigators are putting this, that a particular interest, to see whether or not he may have been, as people would like to say, lured.”

At twenty one years old, Darcy says her boyfriend was looking for a better path.

ASP Fitzroy Yearwood

“He said, he did some bad stuff, well not to bad extent. But, he said, I have to change my life, Darcy I need to make more money, I have to live like a king, he said.”

Reporting for News Five, I am Paul Lopez.