A visibly shaken, and still shaking, Said Musa, former Prime Minister of Belize gave a statement to the media at his home located at the corner of Princess Margaret Drive and E Street. The Rt. Honourable Said Musa told the press as they gathered on his lawn, that sometime around 11 on Tuesday night, he was roused from his sleep to the sounds of gunshots in his neighborhood. He said that he and his wife got up and looked outside through the windows that face Princess Margaret Drive and saw nothing unusual. Musa said he discounted the gunshots as having come from some distance from his neighborhood and they went back to bed.
His deduction of the shooting having taken place elsewhere was negated when on Wednesday morning as he was making his way out of his house to go to the gym, he noticed that the main door of his house had a hole in it. He said he also found a slug on the ground. Further inspections led him outside where he found that his wife’s vehicle, a Santa Fe had the rear passenger side window shattered, also by a bullet. Police were soon called in and they report that 5 expended 9 millimeter shells were found on the outside of Musa’s property on E Street.
But what could have prompted the attack? Musa said that two weeks before Christmas, both he and his wife had received threatening calls. At least two of those calls were made to his wife at her workplace at BCVI where the caller threatened to kill both of them. Other calls were also made to the lawfirm of Musa & Balderamos. Musa says that the caller would say “tell the man give us the paper, otherwise I wah kill Musa and eh wife.” Asked if the calls had anything to do with legal work which he has conducted for anyone he replied, “I am told that ‘the paper’ on the street means money, cash!” There are speculations that ‘the paper’ may be reference to land papers that he may have in his possession as a result of some legal matters he is dealing with.
Since those threats were made, police have been investigating them but have not come up with any leads. Musa says that since those threats, which he treated as, ‘bizarre’, there have not been any others until the shooting on Tuesday night. According to Musa, whoever it was that fired into his house must have been studying the movements in the house as it was after the last lights had been taken off in the bedrooms that the burst of gunshots went off.
“It has reached home to me now, I am being personally threatened, my wife, my family,” he said, adding “it brings home to me what many Belizeans have been experiencing, this daily threat, this lack of personal safety, personal security, it really calls out to a balanced approached to crime fighting.” The distraught Musa stated that during his tenure as Prime Minister he had not given much thought or cared for his personal security but since that incident there has been an offer and he has accepted police security.
