Cocaine left in the ocean by drug cartels washing ashore in the tourist islands of Belize has caused deadly wars between Bloods and Crips gangs for years. The child was one of three people killed.
A three-year-old girl, her father, and another man were killed in a hail of bullets in the popular Belizean tourist destination of San Pedro this week. Authorities said that they believed the grizzly murders on October 23 may be linked to what locals have long referred to as the “sea lotto” — parcels of cocaine that wash ashore of Ambergris Caye, the island where San Pedro is located, and are found by locals.
The stray packages are believed to be “wet dropped” by drug cartels in international waters off the coast of Central America along strategically chosen sea patterns that move towards their counterparts in Mexico, who collect the product and smuggle the drugs north. Occasionally, because of changing tides and weather conditions, bricks get lost and end up on the isolated beaches of the northern tip of Ambergris Caye just a short distance from Mexico’s southern border. The hunt for the “sea lotto” has led to murders on the Belizean island for over a decade.
The child Amari Rodriguez was with her father, mother, and two other men, driving in a golf cart along a dimly lit road that straddles a local lagoon in the San Pedrito neighborhood shortly after midnight when two people emerged shooting from nearby mangroves. Her father, Delmar Rodriguez, died at the scene of the crime, along with a man named Саrlоѕ Сhі. Her mother, Karla Cordova, reportedly told police that she and the third man, Leonel Cornejo, brought the wounded child to the hospital on the golf cart after realizing she had also been shot. Amari Rodriguez was pronounced dead upon arrival.
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It was a targeted killing with bystanders, like any average drive by.