World

Photo: The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

In this Thursday Nov. 8, 2012 photo software company founder John McAfee speaks at the official presentation of equipment ceremony that took place at the San Pedro Police Station in Ambergris Caye, Belize. (AP Photo/Ambergris Today Online-Sofia Munoz)

Software company founder John McAfee said Wednesday he is in hiding, unarmed and accompanied only by a young woman, changing locations and telephones frequently to stay one step ahead of a Belize police unit he says wants to kill him.

Belize police have said they want to question McAfee, who they describe as a "person of interest" in the slaying of fellow American Gregory Viant Faull. Faull, 52, was shot to death over the weekend on the Caribbean island where both men lived.

McAfee, 67, who had a run-in with police earlier this year, told The Associated Press in a telephone interview from an undisclosed location that he didn't kill Faull, though he acknowledged he had differences with the dead man.

"I barely knew him, I barely spoke ten words to him in the last three years," McAfee said, speaking on a cellphone. "Certainly he was not my favourite person and I was not his."

"He was a heavy drinker and an annoyance. But the world is full of annoyances; if we killed all of our annoyances, there would be nobody left," McAfee said.

Other expat residents of the island of Ambergris Caye, where San Pedro is located, have described Faull, the owner of a construction business in Orlando, Florida, as peaceful and well-liked.

The dispute apparently involved several dogs that McAfee kept at his beachside villa and that drew complaints from neighbours. McAfee said that four of his dogs were poisoned late last week, but that he didn't initially suspect Faull of having killed them, though he knew Faull didn't like the dogs.

"He did threaten to shoot them once or twice," McAfee said of Faull, adding that his neighbour was "always angry at them."

But he said he now believes government agents or police poisoned the dogs.

"My assumption was it was some kind of government action again. This is more harassment, that was the first thing that went through my mind, and still is going through my mind. What else could it have been?" he said.

Faull was found with a gunshot wound to his head inside his two-story home north of San Pedro. The housekeeper discovered the body Sunday morning and called police.