Denver Bevans Walks Free from Fireman’s Murder

While a conviction was secured in the High Court this morning, a murder suspect also managed to walk away from a charge that was brought against him in November 2019.  Denver Bevans was accused of the shooting death of a Belize City fireman who was ambushed and executed while walking along Welch Street.  The first person to respond to the scene of the deadly shooting was Corporal Briceño Chub, an off-duty police officer, who was returning from a nearby shop.  After hearing what sounded like gunshots, he saw someone running.  He later identified that individual as eighteen-year-old Denver Bevans.  In trial, Corporal Chub told the court that when he initially saw Bevans, he was seventy-five feet away, but when he saw him with the firearm which he held up before scaling a fence, he was only fifteen feet away.  Nonetheless, when Chub testified to seeing the suspect at Rogers Stadium after he was detained by police and placed in the back of a pickup truck, he only saw the top of the individual’s head.  In court, Chub was unable to identify the man seen running in the footage to be the same person detained by police.  This and other factors, including the absence of a D.N.A. test to determine the blood found on Bevans’ shirt, led the court to find Bevans not guilty of murder.