Shock gripped Sisters Village on the East Bank of Berbice yesterday when the dead bodies of Latoya Adams, 14, and Kellon Sam, 23, were found behind their respective homes, in an apparent murder/suicide.
Adams was found sprawled facing upward under a mango tree behind her house with a knife stuck in her chest. Her neck was also slashed. Sam was discovered hanging from a clothes line attached to a mango tree aback his house.
The police have launched an investigation into what is being classified as a murder/suicide.
The heavy rain was no match for the crying and wailing of relatives who tried to make sense of the gruesome scene.
Sam, a former employee of Caricom Cement Company Incorporated, who was recently laid off from his job was discovered sometime around 6:00hrs. A neighbour whose name was given as ‘Pudu’ was standing on her veranda when she noticed the silhouette of a body hanging from her neighbour’s tree and alerted the family. “I come home midnight from work and went straight to bed. In the morning I hear the neighbour calling, she said ‘look someone hang themself in yall back yard’. I walk going then I see the person and holler and say is Kellon and my old man come out and everybody run go at the back,” recalled Sam’s older brother, Colville Sam.
He said he had last spoken to his brother on the morning of Wednesday, June 4th, and noticed that he was extremely upset about something. “He did vex bout something, cause I hear he going in the pot and I holler and tell him left some food for me and he start behaving with haste, so I ask ‘what wrong with you boy?’ Because he don’t normally behave like that”.
Sam explained that when he questioned his brother further, he said nothing, simply quieted down and left. So he gave no more thought to his brother’s unusual behaviour and left for work. That was the last interaction he had with the apparently troubled young man. When asked if his brother had exhibited any suicidal tendencies, Sam said he had appeared stressed lately.
Meanwhile, Sam’s mother Jacqueline Sam was inconsolable after seeing her son hanging from the tree. She related to Stabroek News that when she came home from work on Wednesday evening she was suffering from a headache and wanted to retire early to bed. However, the odd behaviour of her second son caused her to pause and chat with him. She explained that since being laid off some three weeks ago from the cement company where he had worked for the past four years Sam appeared to be out of kilter. “He use to work at the cement company and they knock he off,
