Belize police say Vancouver woman stabbed to death in suspected robbery

VANCOUVER – Police in the Central American country of Belize are investigating the bloody stabbing death of a Vancouver woman.

Officers were called to the ocean-front community of Consejo (con-say-ho) Shores Tuesday night after neighbours reported a woman screaming.

Police used a ladder to enter the second story of a home and say they found 57-year-old Patricia Lynn Nichiporowich (knee-chee-pour-oh-wich) in the living room face down in a pool of blood.

Assistant Supt. Daniel Arzu of the Corozal Police Department says it appears the woman was stabbed several times in a home invasion-type robbery.

Arzu says Nichiporowich and her partner had been living in the community since last May, but her partner had travelled to Florida just the day before the woman’s murder.

Arzu says the area where the woman lived was a expatriate retirement community, and there is no reason to believe the woman had any links to crime.