Sophia woman’s murder suspect turns up at police station with stab wounds

Three days after allegedly slitting his reputed wife’s throat before setting their Sophia home ablaze, Godfrey Stewart turned up at the Turkeyen Police Station with stab wounds he claimed were inflicted by the dead woman.

Stewart, 59, was taken to the Georgetown Hospital yesterday morning and had since been admitted under police guard. When Stabroek News arrived at the medical institution, Stewart, dressed in a brown shirt and short pants was sitting on a bed drinking a red liquid from a plastic bag. Two uniformed policemen were standing nearby. This newspaper noticed a bandage around his throat and a wound near his left breast. After he had drunk the liquid he was handcuffed to the bed.

One of the ranks told reporters not to approach because “y’all gon get into trouble”.

“I tell y’all that I ain’t want talk to nobody,” Stewart told the policeman.

According to the information reaching this newspaper, around 2.30 am yesterday the man turned up at the Turkeyen Police Station with several stab wounds to his body. He reportedly told ranks they were inflicted during a scuffle with Jacqueline George, who was found burned in her house with her hand bound and her throat slit.

It is unclear where the man was hiding out after the incident but the woman’s children said yesterday that they believe that he was in the canefields a short distance away.

Stewart was detained by the ranks before being taken to the hospital several hours later for medical attention.

A still grief stricken Sharon George was adamant yesterday, one day after she buried her, that her mother did not inflict those injuries on Stewart and opined that he either inflicted them himself or sustained them while he was fleeing into the canefields.

“Look i see them thing and is just a lil scrape,” Sharon said adding that when she turned up at the hospital yesterday midday, “he tell de police he ain’t want see we…”. She said she saw the man sitting on the hospital bed with three policemen guarding him.

Meanwhile, Michelle Wiltshire, another daughter, recounted that she received a telephone call sometime after 10 am informing her that the man had turned himself over to the police but was at the hospital with stab wounds.

She said she later went to the hospital, and saw two wounds on his right side, one on the left and another by the neck.

“I just can’t believe me mother stab he…,” she said before questioning how Stewart could have survived for three days without medical attention for the wounds. She questioned too how her mother could have stabbed him when she was found with her hands tied behind her back.

The woman said that after the fire someone had told her that they had spotted him in Georgetown. Wiltshire said that this along with other pieces of information was passed onto the police.

The woman said that her mother and the man lived together for three years. Some time last year, she said, he had hit her in the head and police got involved in the matter. However her mother dropped the matter.

The bound body of George, 57, was pulled from the charred ruins of her `E’ Field Sophia home early Sunday morning. Her reputed husband was reportedly seen leaving the home just before the blaze. Several times before, he had threatened to kill George, relatives had told this newspaper.

Police had said that around 2.50 am on Sunday, a fire of undetermined origin destroyed George’s wooden home. Neighbours saw the building ablaze and raised an alarm which led to units from the Guyana Fire Service responding and extinguishing the fire. George’s body was subsequently found among the debris. Relatives believe that that after tying her hands behind her back and slitting her throat, George’s reputed husband set the house afire and fled.

Relatives believe she was killed because she wanted to take the man’s name off the lot’s transport and sell her stall at Stabroek Market, where she sold newspapers for over 30 years.