Family look for answers following death of man in San Pedro
Love FM | Police continue to investigate the circumstances surrounding the death of fifty-seven year old Gregorio Eustaquio Cornejo who died yesterday at San Pedro Ambergris Caye. Police are reporting that Cornejo was involved in an altercation at Mata Chica Resort with twenty year old Oscar Barela, a resident of the island. Both men were at a staff party at the resort when an argument started sometime after six yesterday evening in which Barela reportedly punched Cornejo in the face causing him to fall off a pier and into the water. Cornejo was taken out of the water and died shortly after. This afternoon Love News spoke to Cornejo’s wife, Candida Cornejo when she arrived at the Karl Huesner Memorial Hospital to pick up her husband’s body. She told us what she understands happened yesterday evening.
Candida Cornejo; Wife of deceased
“According to what I understand there was a staff party and everyone was drinking. They were about to leave when a fight broke out at the end of the pier. My husband was not involved in this fight but at the end he tried to defend one of his friends and because of defending this friend the one that was fighting hit him on the stomach and when he hit him in the stomach he fell into the water. He does not know what is swimming and what I water so he drowned.”
Dalila Ical, Reporter
You say that he was probably drinking, would you be able to confirm that?
Candida Cornejo
“All of them, all of them. It was a staff party I guess everybody was drinking a little. It is not that they were drunk enough that they forgot one another but they were still drinking. What the police told me this morning was that one will get charged with murder because it looks like this one is the guilty one. They have taken away from me my best and all that I have and all my existence. I don’t care what happens, whether they get justice or not but I know that there is a divine one up in heaven and one day we all will have one.”
A post mortem was conducted this morning on Cornejo’s body and according to his wife; the report is that he died as a result of drowning and a hit to his stomach. Cornjeo has been working on the island for thirteen years. He worked nine years at the Mata Chica Resort. One of Cornejo’s twin sons, Pedro Garcia accompanied his mother this afternoon at the KHMH. Pedro and his brother Pablo Garcia are Cornejo’s adoptive sons but Pedro says that his father was always good to them.
Pablo Garcia; Son of deceased
“My father was always a very happy man, always defending others, always doing the right thing. I am happy because he died with a smile on his face. That is what he taught both of us because I am a twin. He raised us since we were boys. We were abandoned and he picked us up. He is by adopted father but yet he loved me as if he were my biological father. I think there will never be another father like him. Maybe he might have been in the wrong place at the wrong time but that does not justify that that is how he died. I think justice should be served sooner rather than later; something should be done to the person or persons who did this.”
The twins are eighteen years old and are in their second year at sixth form. According to Pedro Garcia, their father was the sole family support and they may not be able to finish their tertiary education this year.
