(Trinidad Express) A fifty-one-year-old “tripped” on Saturday morning. He butchered his estranged wife, then his two sons. He then trekked two miles on a dusty track back to his own little galvanize hut and eventually set it afire.
The series of events happened between midnight and 8 a.m. in the isolated Heights of Guanapo area in Arima. According to police, the man had been separated from his wife for just under two years. Two months ago, he lost a custody battle with his wife for one of his two sons.
The Heights of Guanapo, Arima, is poorly developed and known mainly as an excellent quarry area as well as a dump.
Sometime between Friday night and very early Saturday morning, the man reportedly went to his estranged wife’s house where their two sons, one aged nine, and the other five, also lived.
There was an argument between the couple, said police. One neighbour who spoke to the Sunday Express, said the couple had been having problems which led to their separation two years ago.
The police said that during the argument, the husband drew a cutlass and chopped his wife several times. He then turned the cutlass on his own children.
The older son was killed first. He, too, was chopped several times about the body and, like his mother, he died on the spot. The police found the bodies of the mother and her older son close to each other. The man then turned the cutlass on his youngest son, after the five-year-old had seen his father chop his mother and older brother several times.
The man burnt his house down around 8 a.m., alerting the neighbours to the fact that something was wrong.
On investigating the source of the fire, one neighbour said he spoke to the suspect. He said the man told him that he had killed his wife and children. By this time neighbours had called the police.
“Is a sort of thing with he. He had a mad head,” said the neighbour. “He was making threats before and he say he go kill he wife and children and everybody around.”
