No Arrests in Roaring Creek Armed Assault

The Belize Police Department is yet to make an arrest following a shooting incident in Roaring Creek that saw the police station in that village come under heavy gunfire.  The Commissioner of Police says they know who they are looking for, but are yet to catch up with the alleged perpetrator who opened fire on the building, sending P.C. Amin Leslie diving for cover.  But what led to the brazen shooting, a first-of-its-kind attack on a police department?  Here’s more from Commissioner of Police Chester Williams.

 

Chester Williams, Commissioner of Police

“A person may do things for various reasons.  We don’t know yet what’s the reason, we have a basic idea, but to say that it’s an anti-police sentiment, I would not go that far.  But I will agree with you that it must be condemned to its greatest and the person who is responsible or persons responsible must be brought to justice and we are going to make sure that we do what we can to have that happen. We are concerned, our police station was shot up.  That’s like our house.  Our police officer’s life was put in danger, but I’m not going to make it more sensational for you.  What the media wants is to make it more sensational to make the police look bad.  I’m not going to play into your games, I’m not going to do that.  As I said before, we condemn it to its strongest terms and all of us as a society, including the media should condemn it to its strongest term.  We cannot do things or say things that are going to make criminals feel like we’re glorifying them because that is what propels them to do the things that they do. The fact that you saw the number of operations in Roaring Creek yesterday, the fact that we called an SOE for Roaring Creek, it shows that we are not taking this for granted and we are going hard after those persons who are responsible.

 

Reporter

“Was it the station that was targeted or was it PC Leslie in particular?”

 

Chester Williams

“At this time we don’t know, we have done interviews with PC Leslie to try and verify from him if it he had any personal issue with anybody per se.  That interview yield that there is no one he believed that would have been able to do that.  So we are looking at just maybe a random act, someone who just want to create a scenario for themselves.  And so, that’s how the investigation is looking at this time. Had we just left Roaring Creek and not Cotton Tree then they could always say that they no longer live in Roaring Creek but now live in Cotton Tree and detaining them would be a violation of their rights.  So capturing Cotton Tree brings them into the fray and makes it better for us to be able to deal with them.”