Years of domestic abuse ended in a suicide on Friday when an Alberttown man who had promised to change his ways turned himself over to police and ingested poison while at the station. He died at the public hospital shortly after.
Clarence Blair, 40, of 67 Fifth Street, Alberttown ingested two bottles of a poisonous substance on Friday- the first on his way to the Alberttown Police Station and the other while there.
Police rushed Blair to the hospital after realizing what he had done, but doctors were unable to save him. Blair was frothing at the mouth after he drank the second bottle.
Relatives are saying that stress pushed him to commit the act since according to one relative, “he had a lot of problems”.
Alexis Blair, his wife, told Stabroek News yesterday that her husband was abusive and that he had stepped up his attacks on her in the days leading up to him taking his own life.
She recalled that on Tuesday last he dealt her a severe beating during an argument. She chose to forgive him.
Blair said that she had made prior reports at Alberttown Police Station for her husband, and on Thursday morning she was forced to make another one. She related that on Thursday the man dealt her another severe beating, so severe that she had to be rushed to the hospital.
The woman’s head was bandaged as she spoke and she showed recent physical scars and others that were there from over the years. She fought back tears explaining that after 21 years of marriage she was willing to “forgive and forget”.
The police advised her on Thursday to report any sighting of her husband. Alexis Blair said that he showed up at her work place on Friday morning and immediately fled the premises.
She recalled alerting two constables in the area who accompanied her back to the work site and managed to apprehend her husband.
She said her husband slipped away from the constables shortly after they apprehended him and later showed up at their Alberttown home making threats.
“He tell how I gon punish and he gon beat me and beat me in front of de police,” she related. She said that she did not respond.
Clarence Blair already had the substance on him when he showed up at home. An older brother upbraided him about his behaviour and urged him to go to station.
He decided to turn himself in to the police and told relatives that he would change.
He then asked his eldest daughter to accompany him to the station and subsequently left home.
This was around 2 pm on Friday. The girl saw him drinking something from a bottle but had no idea what it was at the time.
Alexis Blair lamented last night that she had lost her husband. She said that they had many fights, but that “things would work out.
“I can’t bear it,” she said struggling with her emotions.
The couple has seven children, the youngest being five months old. Clarence Blair was employed as security guard at Kalibur Security Services.
