On a seemingly ordinary Monday night in Belize City, a routine decision to leave the front door unlocked for a young woman heading to volleyball practice became the opening chapter of a devastating family tragedy that has once again put the persistent threat of gun violence in the Caribbean nation under the spotlight.
Fitzroy Myvette, a long-time Belize City resident, told his wife not to secure their home’s front door that evening. His 20-year-old daughter Brianna, an employee at Belize Central Prison, had left the house around 7:30 p.m. for her regular volleyball training, following a routine she stuck to week after week: after practice, she would stop to grab a late-night snack before heading home to settle in for the night. Myvette planned to stay awake to let her in, so he told his wife to leave the door unlatched.
What no one in the family could have anticipated was that this ordinary evening would end in senseless violence. Shortly before midnight, Brianna was seated in a parked car alongside a friend outside a Freetown Road restaurant when an unknown gunman opened fire on the vehicle. Struck by gunfire, the 20-year-old did not survive the attack.
Exhausted after hours of waiting, Myvette had fallen asleep before his daughter returned, still holding out hope he would hear her key turn in the lock. It was not Brianna’s footsteps that woke the family past 11 p.m., but a sharp, unexpected bang on their front door. When Myvette opened it, he found uniformed police officers waiting outside, who asked a family member to accompany them to the local hospital to identify a shooting victim. Myvette was the one who went, and he was forced to confirm that the life cut short was his own daughter’s.
As of the latest update, investigators have not yet identified a suspect or determined a clear motive for the shooting. The killing has left another Belize City family grappling with unfathomable grief, marking the latest young life lost to the ongoing problem of unregulated gun violence in the community.