A mysterious disappearance in Belize’s Dangriga District has taken an unexpected turn, after a close family member of missing local man Jericho Humes has refuted widespread kidnapping claims that circulated earlier this week. While the unsubstantiated abduction allegations have been dismissed by Humes’ own relative, the 35-year-old (as of local reporting context) man remains untraced, and law enforcement continues to treat the incident as an active missing person investigation.
On Wednesday, Assistant Superintendent of Police Stacy Smith spoke to local media, confirming that investigators had interviewed Humes’ brother, who was one of the relatives initially linked to the kidnapping claims. According to Smith, the brother acknowledged that he had viewed an unverified video shared in connection to the disappearance, but stated clearly that the individual shown in the footage was not his missing sibling.
“This case remains classified as a missing persons investigation, and all our investigative work is proceeding from that framework,” Smith told reporters. She added that law enforcement has not yet been able to trace how the relative received the unconfirmed video, noting that “whoever sent this material is a person of interest that our team is working to identify.”
The latest official update comes just one day after a group of Humes’ relatives told police they had received a series of extortionate demands from anonymous callers. The relatives claimed the callers, who spoke Spanish and placed the calls from a number with a Mexican area code, demanded a $10,000 ransom for Humes’ safe release. The callers also sent a photograph purporting to show Humes with a knife held to his neck, and threatened that Humes would be killed if police were contacted to investigate the demand.
To date, Belizean law enforcement has not been able to independently verify any of these extortion and kidnapping claims. Humes was last observed leaving his home to travel to work on a recent Wednesday morning. When he failed to return home and could not be reached, family members entered his property and discovered his home had been ransacked: a entry door had been forced open, and a pot of cooked food had been left out, left to spoil. No signs of Humes have been detected since that discovery.