A quiet wait for public transportation at a roadside bus stop near Hattieville, Belize, became the site of an unthinkable act of violence on an unspecified date in June 2026, leaving a young expectant mother and her unborn son dead, and a community and nation reeling from grief and anger.
Twenty-three-year-old Jane Urbina, a resident of Santa Elena in the Cayo District, had just celebrated her birthday and was just two months away from welcoming her first child, a boy she had spent years dreaming of raising. She had traveled that day to Belize Central Prison to visit her brother, PC Lionel Urbina, who is currently held on remand awaiting trial for a 2025 murder that left 19-year-old Kevin De Paz dead on Caye Caulker. What should have been a routine family visit ended in cold-blooded killing, cutting short a life full of anticipation for the future.
Senior law enforcement officials with Belize’s National Crimes Investigation Branch have outlined the details of the brazen attack. According to ACP Hilberto Romero, the branch’s head, two male suspects arrived at the bus stop on a motorcycle immediately after Urbina left the prison. One suspect dismounted, walked directly toward Urbina, and fired multiple shots, striking her with fatal injuries. The attackers then fled the scene on the motorcycle, heading in the direction of Belize City.
A passing civilian motorist pursued the fleeing suspects, forcing the motorcycle off the road roughly a quarter mile from the attack site. The pair abandoned the vehicle and fled into nearby dense brush, and extensive searches conducted by law enforcement in the immediate aftermath failed to locate them. Investigators have confirmed the two suspects are believed to be residents of Belize City, and a manhunt is ongoing.
For Urbina’s family, the killing is the latest in a string of devastating violent tragedies that have stretched over years, reopening old wounds that never fully healed. After De Paz’s 2025 killing, Lionel Urbina reported receiving repeated threats against his life. Just weeks after the arrest, the family’s Santa Elena home came under gunfire; during the attack, Lionel Urbina fatally shot the alleged attacker, Darnell Arnold, a Hattieville resident. The home was already the site of a prior killing: in 2024, Urbina’s grandmother, Miriam Castellanos, was stabbed to death at the property. Years before that, another cousin was killed, and no one has ever been prosecuted for that crime, the family says.
Urbina’s family told reporters that the young mother had received direct threats on her mobile phone in the lead-up to the attack, but she maintained her innocence, insisting she had no connection to the ongoing legal case against her brother. “She was innocent, she had nothing to do with this,” a cousin of the deceased told reporters in an emotional interview. “Why would anyone hurt her? She didn’t owe anybody anything. She was just happy, waiting for her baby. All we want is justice this time, after all we’ve been through.”
Friends remember Urbina as a joyful young woman overjoyed at the prospect of starting her own family. Whitney Hyde, a close friend, recalled the excitement Urbina felt when she shared her pregnancy news. “She had been waiting so long for this,” Hyde said in a phone interview. “She told me, ‘I’m finally having a baby,’ and we were going to be mothers together. She never even got to have her baby shower.”
Investigators have not yet ruled out any potential motives, but the leading line of inquiry is whether the attack is connected to the pending murder case against Lionel Urbina. Law enforcement officials confirmed they will be conducting additional interviews inside the prison as part of the investigation to gather new details that could help identify the killers and uncover the motive for the attack.
The brutality of the attack, carried out in broad daylight against an unarmed pregnant woman, has sparked widespread public outrage across Belize, with growing calls for law enforcement to move quickly to arrest the suspects and deliver accountability. Urbina’s family has also echoed longstanding demands for increased security in the region, noting they have lived in constant fear for months amid the string of violence targeting their household.