Trinidad: Family fight ends in death

Relatives of murder victim Terry Elie return to his home yesterday where he was attacked on Saturday night.

(Trinidad Guardian) Weeks of bit­ter ar­gu­ments and rage end­ed trag­i­cal­ly for Ter­ry El­lie on Sat­ur­day when he died from in­juries he suf­fered in a fight with a male rel­a­tive hours ear­li­er. 

El­lie, 44, a ma­son, suf­fered se­vere in­juries to his head and up­per body, sus­pect­ly from a blunt ob­ject.

A re­port stat­ed that around 12. 30 am, El­lie and  the 34-year-old rel­a­tive had an ar­gu­ment at their home in a squat­ting com­mu­ni­ty in Savonet­ta.

Dur­ing that ar­gu­ment, El­lie was se­vere­ly beat­en. It was the same rel­a­tive who picked him up and took him to the Cou­va Dis­trict Health Fa­cil­i­ty where he was treat­ed.

How­ev­er, El­lie died around 2 pm. The death was re­port­ed to Cou­va po­lice and the rel­a­tive was tak­en in­to cus­tody, where he re­mained up to late yes­ter­day.

 Neigh­bours said El­lie, who was orig­i­nal­ly from Hin­dus­tan, New Grant, on­ly moved in­to the com­mu­ni­ty eight month’s ago and was stay­ing in a shack at the back of the rel­a­tive’s house. They de­scribed him as a “cool fel­la”.

How­ev­er, an­oth­er rel­a­tive, Shane Cum­mings, said that for weeks, El­lie had been heck­ling the sus­pect about his wife.

“I spoke to him (sus­pect) just the night be­fore and he told me that Ter­ry was heck­ling him, build­ing jones on him and mak­ing bac­cha­nal. It was more like he (Ter­ry) was go­ing af­ter the man’s wife. His (sus­pect) wife is preg­nant so she went to spit out­side and Ter­ry told her that if she spit on him, he would come in the house and beat every­body,” Cum­mings said.

Based on what he heard, Cum­mings said El­lie went in­to the rel­a­tive’s house when a piece of wood on Sat­ur­day morn­ing and the ta­bles turned on him. He be­lieves that the rel­a­tive had no in­ten­tion of killing El­lie and the en­tire or­deal was trag­ic.