A MAN is in police custody following the killing of 64-year-old Brenda Belle of St Barnabas, St Michael, on Tuesday night.
The man, who allegedly ingested a poisonous substance, is detained at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital (QEH) under police guard.
The stabbing death took place at a house in Cutting Road, Haggatt Hall, St Michael, where Belle had taken refuge following a violent attack in the Fairchild Street Market on Saturday night.
Police are also investigating the burning of Belle’s house at St Barnabas.
The Cutting Road house was occupied by Herman Bentick who said the Guyanese born Belle took refuge there after being released on Sunday from hospital where she had been treated for stab wounds inflicted Saturday night by her assailant.
A shaken Bentick told the DAILY NATION yesterday that he believed his friend’s killer finished what he started last Saturday.
He said that just after 8 p.m. on Tuesday, he and Belle returned from the police station where she took a medical report.
He said she fell asleep watching television.
Then he heard a banging sound on the window and the name “Brenda” being called.
He said he recognized the voice.
“We run through the house and went in the garden and I get over the galvanized fence. I say Brenda come but Brenda was so big and heavy and I trying to pull she over but she say Bentick go long and leave me alone.
“I stand there for about 60 or 80 seconds looking at Brenda trying to get under the cellar and she can’t get under the cellar. If I could have pulled her over,
I would have pulled she over and carry her way,” said Bentick, as he recalled what took place Saturday night.
He continued: “I standing there like I lost and the man in the house wielding the cutlass making bare noise. I said Lord what is this here . . . and she say: ‘Go long and leave me, go long and leave me’.”
Bentick said he turned and ran through a bushy area and stopped at the first house and woke up the occupant asking him to call the police.
He said that while there, he heard his friend screaming: ‘Don’t kill me,
. . . don’t kill me’. That was the last word I heard from her.”
Bentick said he was shocked by the bloody sight.
“I see the man in front the house with a knife in he hand saying: ‘Freedom, I got she, man’. Everybody out by them steps stand up looking but nobody ain’t coming out to help”.
Noting that he too stood his distance, Bentick said the attacker then jumped on a bicycle and rode away.
“I see Brenda gasping for breath. He cut up she finger, cut she pun she parts,” he said.
Bentick recalled, “I say Brenda, hold on, Brenda, the ambulance coming and she ain’t know me because she eyes ain’t moving.
I run out to the road looking east, west, north, south, nobody ain’t looking. I went back to Brenda and she made one gasp and that was it.”
Belle’s long-standing friend Beverley Hughes said that she was not surprised at Belle’s fate.
Hughes said Belle had often complained of abuse.
“I going to say the system failed Brenda because she got stabbed last week and the police said they couldn’t take action unless she got a medical, which is stupid,” she said.
According to Hughes: “When I get the message that Brenda dead it really didn’t surprise me.
“If the police only coming and warn you or ain’t pay you no attention, what you expect to happen. The man didn’t [go] out there to play when he stab she.”
Another friend of the deceased, Colin Primo, reflected that he saw the suspected killer last Saturday night, after hearing that he had just stabbed Brenda and she was in hospital.
Primo said that the suspected killer pleaded with him to ask Belle not to press charges because he feared going to jail.
“I called her and say he begging me to tell you don’t worry with the story because he don’t want
to get lock up. And she turn and say: ‘He always with this thing, the last time he hit me and swell up all my face’. I felt so sorry for her. Brenda was a nice person.”