Prison Inmate Left Wheelchair Bound After Escape Attempt at Belize Central Prison

Prison inmate 30-year-old Nyrere Parchue, is now wheelchair bound, following injuries sustained during an escape attempt yesterday. Parchue tried to scale the fence at the Belize Central Prison just after nine o’clock yesterday morning.  Despite repeated verbal warnings and as many as seven warning shots being fired at him. Parchue persisted in scaling the priosn fence.  The guards eventually shot Parchue in the head and neck, causing him to fall off the top of the fence. He was taken to the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital for treatment and given emergency surgery. It was later discovered that Parchue had fractured a vertebra in his spine. Director of the Belize Central Prison, Virgilio Murillo, says that he is unsure of Parchue’s prospects of walking again, but the prison is equipped to handle it if he has to finish out the rest of his sentence in a wheelchair.

Virgilio Murillo, Director, Belize Central Prison: “Well the latest update I have is that he is in a paraplegic state currently and according to the feedback from the prison’s medical officer it has to do with him having fractured one of his vertebrae in his mid back area and that was as a result of the fall from off the fence when he was climbing over. Remember he was shot from the fence when he was all the way at the top and that’s a fence that’s about twenty feet high. If he returns in the paraplegic state that he’s in to serve out the rest of his sentence then we have special housing units that can cater for him. There will be inmates assigned to him to take him around and look out for his needs, of course under the supervision of the prison’s medical officer and the medic staff. We have a totally blind prisoner in the person serving a long sentence. We have had paraplegics in this prison in the past, quite a number of them and we cater for them. I cannot bring him back to the prison once his sentence has expired. He remains a person whether he is within the prison or outside the prison. So if he stays in the hospital right up until his time his sentence expires then pretty much we just have the discharge him as is required by the law but we will not be able to bring him back in here to serve whatever portion that he was not in the prison because he remains a prisoner whether within or outside.”

Parchue was serving a three-month sentence for drug possession and damage to property. He was due to be released next month.