David Fonseca
Former Belize City Mayor David Fonseca is dead. The retired People’s United Party politician, who served at City Hall for a record sixteen consecutive years, took his own life sometime around two this afternoon in the bathroom at his residence in Stuart’s Alley. He was the first mayor to be directly elected and from all accounts he was a popular politician, while in office. News of the apparent suicide has spread like wildfire across political circles, as well as the social media. Shortly after three o’clock today, friends and family, including his elder brother, Ralph Fonseca, congregated at the home where CIB personnel and forensic pathologist Dr. Mario Estradabran had been summoned. It is unclear what caused the former mayor to turn a gun on himself and by all accounts, the soft spoken businessman never mentioned experiencing personal hardships. We reached out to a relative of Fonseca who says that he didn’t give any indication that something was amiss because he wouldn’t normally talk about personal issues or show his emotions, not even to his family. The family member went on to say that just this morning she spoke with him and everything seemed normal, so the tragic incident has left the entire family in shock. The People’s United Party is yet to issue a release on this tragedy, but News Five spoke with former councilor and colleague, Adrian ‘Danny’ Madrid, who shared fond recollections, having served three terms under Fonseca’s leadership.
Adrian ‘Danny’ Madrid, Former Councilor
“I met David around 1988 when he started the campaign for the Belize City Council and I found him to be a very quiet and nice person. And so I served with him as a councilor and I served with him also with himself as mayor. But we served together from 1989 to 2006 and what I can say about Mayor David was that he was a very humble, intelligent and understanding person at City Hall. As a matter of fact, just today I got a call from some of the former employees from the council stating the same thing, you know, that he was a very understanding person. I was very, I am happy that I served with him and we did a lot of changes at City Hall through David.”
Isani Cayetano
“When was the last time you saw him and what was that exchange like?”
Adrian ‘Danny’ Madrid
Adrian ‘Danny’ Madrid
“He was in my office last week because we do business together and we also met at some of our meetings. As everyone knows, David is a soft spoken person, he doesn’t speak much. He’s that type of mayor, he’s more action than speeches, more action than words. We had a cordial conversation in my office here and I couldn’t detect anything wrong with him, you know, we spoke generally about the business and what meeting we’ll be attending. But I really, really didn’t detect anything that was wrong with David because that’s the person he is, he’s always soft spoken and saying nice things to you about other people. So I couldn’t detect anything that was wrong with him.”
Isani Cayetano
“Your fondest memory of time spent with him.”
Adrian ‘Danny’ Madrid
“Yeah. We had a lot of good times. I can remember when karaoke started he was the mayor and I would invite him, “Mayor, let’s go out, take a break and sing a little karaoke.” And he would go with us and we would sing together. We can’t sing but we liked to sing and the other thing is that tomorrow is his birthday, I think he’s sixty-one, I’m not sure. At all our functions, Labor Day functions, the entire city council employees would come together and make a nice cake for him because, you know, it’s his birthday. The entire staff would celebrate the birthday with David. We did the first work phase, phase one that’s going on now in which we had to do changes at City Hall. We had to get our first city manager, our first financial manager, traffic manager. As a matter of fact, we took over the Traffic Department in 1994 and all of that with the guidance of David as mayor. I can recall David having his Wednesday clinics and it was packed with people to see David and he would not leave that office until he has seen the last person.”
David Fonseca dead on the eve of his birthday.
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