Toddler with Cerebral Palsy Shot During New Year’s Celebration  

2025 has just begun, and already several Belize City residents have been hospitalized due to gunshot injuries, including a four-year-old girl. Just after midnight on January first, the little girl was watching fireworks with her family on Levi Slusher Street when she suddenly felt a pain in her arm. At first, her family thought a stray stone had hit her, but an x-ray revealed the shocking truth: she had been struck by a bullet. Thankfully, she is expected to make a full recovery, but the incident has left her family traumatized and the community deeply shaken. Here’s News Five’s Britney Gordon with more details.

 

Britney Gordon, Reporting

On Wednesday, as the clock struck midnight on New Year’s Day, Belize was alive with the sounds of fireworks and dynamite. The dazzling lights and booming sounds are a beloved tradition for families, friends, and communities to welcome the new year. However, this celebration can quickly turn dangerous, as the sound of dynamite is almost indistinguishable from gunshots. One Belize City family experienced this firsthand when their four-year-old daughter was struck by a bullet while watching the fireworks. The girl’s mother shared the harrowing details of this terrifying incident.

 

Voice of: Mother of Shooting Victim

“ Two minutes after our firework show finished, her hand was up and I bring it down and she da like mommy, I get hurt. When she say, Mommy, I got hurt, I look, but it’s like a cut, it almost look like it was open. So I yell for my brother and I tell her, da weh happened, the baby get hurt. He say, that probably a stone, got in there weh fly off of the street or the fireworks. So my second brother come and he check it, the neighbors surrounded me and the baby and look at it. So he run upstairs, get the cloth tie it and then I noticed they have a big object inside of her hand. So I mi di hold down weh part the object and mek it no move and fold her hand and we left to the hospital.”

 

At the hospital, the family made the horrifying discovery that their little girl had been injured by a bullet. Thankfully, doctors were able to remove the bullet from her arm. While the mother is deeply traumatized by the incident, she is doing her best to stay strong for her daughter. Remarkably, the child didn’t cry during the ordeal and is now recovering well, according to her mother.

 

Voice of: Mother of Shooting Victim

“ She has cerebral palsy, so she can’t walk. So most of the time she sleeps, and when she wakes, I don’t know if she’s traumatized, she keeps asking, like, when is my home going to get better? And question, why did the man hurt me?  And those questions  got me very emotional because explaining to her that she got a  gun wound in her hand, it’s rough.  Because it keeps replaying and she keeps questioning it.”

 

After the bullet was removed, the family headed to the police station to file a formal report. The mother claims they spent over three hours there with her daughter. During the interview, she alleges that the officers were hostile and initially didn’t believe her story.

 

Voice of: Mother of Shooting Victim

“She started to interrogate me  and the way how I process it, the questions and doing her job, right? I let her ask her question, but the way she was stating it, because many of my family member has license gun. And my brothers have license gun as well, but she was trying to let me confess that my brother probably pulled out his firearm and make shots in the air. But before that, I request if they can test bullet to see what gun it comes from to see which gun it come from, because I even wanted to know what kind of bullet it was when I was at the hospital, I asked, but the inspector couldn’t tell. So he said, leave it up to the professionals. And I agree, but then it, during the interrogation, the officer was stiff, but I keep to my words, but she would want, she wanted me to switch. But how can I switch when I’m telling the truth?”

 

While the child is on the mend, many questions remain unanswered. The family is still in the dark about where the bullet came from, leaving them with a sense of unease and uncertainty.

 

Britney Gordon

“Do you have any idea where this stray bullet might have come from?”

 

Voice of: Mother of Shooting Victim

“ No ma’am. No idea. You couldn’t detect or determine if or from a right, left anyway. Because it’s hard for you to determine whether it was fireworks Big dynamite or gunshot or stone because it was literally twelve o’clock when everyone was losing out their stuff.”

 

Britney Gordon for News Five.