Speculation continued in Bartica yesterday about how national footballer Neil Hernandez might have met his end, but the last person to have seen him alive said that he carried a rope and spoke of ending his life by hanging.
Odessa Lynch, the reputed wife of Hernandez who said she is being vilified in some sections of the community for a crime she knows little of, told Stabroek News yesterday that Hernandez was bitter and angry in the hours before his death. She said he had threatened to take his life on previous occasions but on Monday he seemed very serious about it.
“The community did not expect him to do this nor his family and the same with me because that was not the person he was. But when he was angry, another Neil showed up and that is the person who was present on Monday,” Lynch related
The police said in a press release issued yesterday that Lynch had made a report on December 10 that Hernandez had assaulted and threatened her. The police arrested and detained Hernandez, but later released him after Lynch said she wanted no further police action in the matter, the release said.
The 27-year-old Hernandez’s partially burnt body was pulled from the ruins of Lynch’s two-storey home at Four Miles Road, Potaro, Bartica on Monday after fire ravaged the home. Earlier reports had speculated that the footballer set the home alight then shot himself.
His relatives have since called for a thorough investigation since they feel some things do not add up in the story police got from persons close to him.
Lynch believes that Hernandez had hatched a plan involving her but she threw things out of balance by doing the unexpected. She said he had called her early in the morning ranting about his passport. He claimed he was in Suriname but badly needed to get his hands on the document.
The woman said she did not believe for one minute that he was out of the country and immediately suspected that he was at Bartica, in the home they once shared as a couple. But before she could ask where he was exactly he hung up. Suspecting that he was in her home and wanted her to go there, Lynch said, she decided to go but with a relative.
When they arrived at the home it was locked, but there were signs that someone had broken in through the bathroom window. She said Hernandez was in the home hiding under a bed when they got in and checked. After her relative confronted him about his behaviour and asked him to leave, she said, he got out from under the bed and left the home with a bag in his hand.
It was then she saw the rope and asked what it was for. She said he answered that he would take his own life with it.
“That rope scared me because what if I had gone there alone? I think the news would have read differently and that both of us would have probably been dead because he always said that if I don’t want him he would kill me and then take his own life,” Lynch said.
She said Hernandez left the home and went in the direction of a relative’s home. Shortly after she too left with her relative but she proceeded to the police station where she made a report about him breaking into the home.
While she was still at the station, Lynch said, she received a call that Hernandez had contacted one of her relatives to say that he was about to commit suicide in the home. She informed his family and the police before rushing back to the home with two officers.
According to Lynch, Hernandez was alive when she turned up at the home in the company of two police officers on Monday midday. She said they called out to him but he did not answer.
Then smoke was spotted coming from the bedroom. She said it was likely that he set the mattress on fire then just took his life. Lynch said there was no sound of a gunshot or any sound coming from the home when the fire started spreading.
Though persons wanted to douse the flames, she said, the fire spread quickly. She said the police attempted to get in but without any luck. According to her, people hatched all kinds of stories when Hernandez died but no one knows for sure what happened while he was alone in there.
She said he was a good man and that they lived happily for many months before he started talking about killing her and then committing suicide if she ever ended the relationship.
The relationship ended three weeks ago when they separated and she left the home. She said they still talked but he did not want to accept it was over.
“Some people do not want to believe that Neil spoke of ending it all if we ever broke up but he did and it still shocks me,” Lynch said.
The police said investigations are continuing.
